EC7010

Robotics and Automation

Dr. Lilantha Samaranayake
Department of Electrical & Electronic Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
University of Peradeniya
lilantha@ee.pdn.ac.lk, +94812393426
Course contents
 Introduction to Autonomous Robots (1h)
 Current and Future Trends in Robotics (2h)
 Motors and Motor Control Techniques (4h)
 Sensors and Actuators (4h)
 Autonomous Mobile Robots and Robot Intelligence (4h)
 Robot Control Board
 Pneumatic and Hydraulic Control Systems
 Machine Vision Dr. Parakrama Ekanayake
 Programmable Logic Controllers
 Robot Design Mini Project
References
Introduction to Autonomous Robots
Motivation

 Intelligent Environments are aimed at improving the inhabitants’

experience and task performance
 Automate functions in the home
 Provide services to the inhabitants
 Decisions coming from the decision maker(s) in the environment have
to be executed.
 Decisions require actions to be performed on devices
 Decisions are frequently not elementary device interactions but
rather relatively complex commands
 Decisions define set points or results that have to be achieved
 Decisions can require entire tasks to be performed
Automation and Robotics in Intelligent
Environments
 Control of the physical environment
 Automated blinds
 Thermostats and heating ducts
 Automatic doors
 Automatic room partitioning
 Personal service robots
 House cleaning
 Lawn mowing
 Assistance to the elderly and handicapped
 Office assistants
 Security services
 Robotics in general
 Historical perspective
 The acclaimed Czech playwright Karel Capek (1890-
1938) made the first use of the word ‘robot’, from the
Czech word for forced labor or serf.
 The use of the word Robot was introduced into his play
R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) which opened in
Prague in January 1921. In R.U.R., Capek poses a
paradise, where the machines initially bring so many
benefits but in the end bring an equal amount of blight
in the form of unemployment and social unrest.
 Science fiction
 Asimov, among others glorified the term ‘robotics’,
particularly in I, Robot, and early films such as
Metropolis (1927) paired robots with a dystopic society
 Formal definition (Robot Institute of America):
 "A reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to
move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through
various programmed motions for the performance of a variety
of tasks".
Robots in everyday use and popular culture

http://www.robotshop.com/robotic-trends.aspx
Common applications
 Industrial
 Robotic assembly

 Commercial
 Household chores

 Military
 Medical
 Robot-assisted surgery

da Vinci surgical system

Common applications
 Planetary Exploration
 Mars rover
 Undersea exploration

Suggested insertion:
image of Mars rover
Autonomous Robots
 The control of autonomous robots involves a number of subtasks
 Understanding and modeling of the mechanism
 Kinematics, Dynamics, and Odometry
 Reliable control of the actuators
 Closed-loop control
 Generation of task-specific motions
 Path planning
 Integration of sensors
 Selection and interfacing of various types of sensors
 Coping with noise and uncertainty
 Filtering of sensor noise and actuator uncertainty
 Creation of flexible control policies
 Control has to deal with new situations
Traditional Industrial Robots
 Traditional industrial robot control uses robot arms
and largely pre-computed motions
 Programming using “teach box”
 Repetitive tasks
 High speed
 Few sensing operations
 High precision movements
 Pre-planned trajectories and
task policies
 No interaction with humans
Problems
 Traditional programming techniques for industrial
robots lack key capabilities necessary in intelligent
environments
 Only limited on-line sensing
 No incorporation of uncertainty
 No interaction with humans
 Reliance on perfect task information
 Complete re-programming for new tasks
Requirements for Robots in Intelligent
Environments
 Autonomy
 Robots have to be capable of achieving task objectives
without human input
 Robots have to be able to make and execute their own
decisions based on sensor information
 Intuitive Human-Robot Interfaces
 Use of robots in smart homes can not require extensive
user training
 Commands to robots should be natural for inhabitants
 Adaptation
 Robots have to be able to adjust to changes in the
environment
Autonomous Robot Control
 To control robots to perform tasks autonomously a number of
tasks have to be addressed:
 Modeling of robot mechanisms
 Kinematics, Dynamics
 Robot sensor selection
 Active and passive proximity sensors
 Low-level control of actuators
 Closed-loop control
 Control architectures
 Traditional planning architectures
 Behavior-based control architectures
 Hybrid architectures
Modeling the Robot Mechanism
 Forward kinematics describes how the robots joint
angle configurations translate to locations in the world

2 (x, y, z)
1

(x, y, )

 Inverse kinematics computes the joint angle

configuration necessary to reach a particular point in
space.
 Jacobians calculate how the speed and configuration
of the actuators translate into velocity of the robot
Modeling:
Coordinate frames & forward kinematics
• Three coordinate frames: 0 1 2

• ‘0’ is the base frame (world frame), ‘2’ is the tool frame

• Positions:
2
[ ][
x1
y1
a cos (θ1 )
= 1
a1 sin (θ 1 ) ]
[ ][
x2
y2
a cos (θ 1 )+ a 2 cos (θ1 + θ 2 )
= 1
a 1 sin (θ1 )+ a2 sin (θ 1 + θ 2 ) ][]
≡ x
y t 0 1
• Orientation of the tool frame:

R20 =  xˆ2  xˆ0 yˆ 2  xˆ0  = cos(θ1 + θ2 )  sin (θ1 + θ2 )

   
 xˆ2  yˆ 0 yˆ 2  yˆ 0  sin (θ1 + θ2 ) cos(θ1 + θ2 ) 
Modeling:
Inverse kinematics
• Find the joint angles for a desired tool position

xt2 + yt2  a12  a22

cos(θ2 ) =  D  sin(θ2 ) = ± 1  D 2
2a1a2
 1 D2  1  y  1  a2sin(θ2 ) 

1
θ2 = tan ±  θ = tan    tan  
 
D 
1
 x  a1 + a2 cos(θ2 ) 

• Two solutions!: elbow up and elbow down
Modeling:
Velocity kinematics: the Jacobian (J)
 State space includes velocity

x  a1 sin 11  a2 sin 1   2  1  2 
y  a cos   a cos      
1 1 1 2 1 2  1 2 
 x   a1 sin 1  a2 sin 1   2   a2 sin 1   2  1 
 y    a cos  a cos    a cos       
   1 1 2 1 2 2 1 2   2 

x  J
t

 x   1 
xt   ,    

 y   2 
 Inverse of Jacobian gives the joint velocities:
  J 1 xt
1  1  a2 cos1   2  a2 sin 1   2    x 
    a cos  a cos     a sin   a sin      y 
 2  a1a2 sin  2  1 1 2 1 2 1 1 2 1 2  

 This inverse does not exist when 2 = 0 or , called

singular configuration or singularity
Modeling:
Singular configurations

 Manipulator end-effector cannot move in certain directions.

 In the above cases the end effector cannot move in the positive x2 direction
when 2 = 0.
 Related to the nonuniqueness of solutions of the inverse kinematics., i.e.,
given end-effector position, there are in general two possible solutions to
the inverse kinematics.
 Separates the two solutions in the sense that the manipulator cannot go
from one configuration to the other without passing through a singularity.
 For many applications it is important to plan manipulator motions in such a
way that singular configurations are avoided.
Mobile Robot Odometry
 In mobile robots the same configuration in terms of joint
angles does not identify a unique location
 To keep track of the robot it is necessary to
incrementally update the location (this process is
called odometry or dead reckoning)
t  t t
 x  x   vx 
     
 y   y    v y t
      
     
 Example: A differential drive robot
r (L  R ) r (L  R ) L R
v x  cos( ) , v y  sin( )
2 2 (x, y, )
r

  L  R
d

Actuator Control
 To get a particular robot actuator to a particular
location it is important to apply the correct amount of
force or torque to it.
 Requires knowledge of the dynamics of the robot
 Mass, inertia, friction
 For a simplistic mobile robot: F = m a + B v
 Frequently actuators are treated as if they were
independent (i.e. as if moving one joint would not
affect any of the other joints).
 The most common control approach is PD-control
(proportional, differential control)
 For the simplistic mobile robot moving in the x
direction:
F  KP xdesired  xactual   KD vdesired  vactual 
Robot Navigation

 Path planning addresses the task of computing a

trajectory for the robot such that it reaches the
desired goal without colliding with obstacles
 Optimal paths are hard to compute in particular for
robots that can not move in arbitrary directions
(i.e. nonholonomic robots)
 Shortest distance paths can be dangerous since they
always graze obstacles
 Paths for robot arms have to take into account the
entire robot (not only the end-effector)
Sensor-Driven Robot Control

 To accurately achieve a task in an intelligent

environment, a robot has to be able to react
dynamically to changes on its surrounding
 Robots need sensors to perceive the environment
 Most robots use a set of different sensors
 Different sensors serve different purposes
 Information from sensors has to be integrated into the
control of the robot