-[Looks great (at least at this image size)!]-
That is one small issue at the moment... much bigger than 640x480 and it
becomes clear that the model is not as detailed as it could be. However, the
intention is to produce an animation with this, so this should be fine.

-[The cylinder with yellow label looks misplaced: it can't move the arm
because it is pointing to its axis of rotation]-
Agreed. However, this is "true to life", as the robot is roughly modelled on
a Kawasaki ZX series one:
http://www.kawasakirobotics.com/products/Robots/RobotModels/Robots_ZSeries.a
sp. I have been wondering what this cylinder actually does in real life. The
motion of the arm is done entirely by electric motors, so my only guess is
that the cylinder acts to push the arm to the vertical position, to partly
counter the not insignificant weight of the arm and so require less torque
from the driving motor.

Thanks for the help on the direction/position of the "fingertips". The next
fairly fairly big problem is inverse kinematics. A general IK solver is
mathematically a rather difficult problem, but by specifying the angle as
well as the position of the "fingertip", I specify 6 degrees of freedom,
which coincidentally is the same as the number of joints in the arm. This
should make things somewhat easier.

-[Robots building a robot?!? Animated?!? I'll stay tuned ...]-
I've been thinking very much the same things, but hadn't quite got round to
thinking exactly what. So for inspiration, I've just loaded up my Minority
Report DVD to see what sort of things happen in the scene in the car
factory. Bizarrely, and totally coincidentally, every robot in the factory
is a Kawasaki ZX series... makes my POV-Ray one look a bit pathetic...

-Chris

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