Lecture 1: Introduction

Text Book: Introduction to Robotics, Mechanics and Control JJ Craig.

Virtually anything that operates with some degree of autonomy, usually under compute control,
has at some point been called a robot.

There are manipulators, mobile robots and hybrid robot systems.

In this course: We will study rigid manipulators and very basic wheeled mobile robots.

1. Manipulators
a. In robotics, a manipulator is a device used to manipulate materials without direct
physical contact by the operator.
b. In case of rigid robots, manipulators are created from a sequence of link and joint
combinations to form kinematic chains, (most of the robots are open kinematic
chain called serial manipulators, there are closed kinematic chain parallel
manipulators as well.)
c. DOF: In the case of typical industrial robots, because a manipulator is usually an
open kinematic chain, and because each joint position is usually defined with a
single variable, the number of joints equals the number of degrees of freedom.
i. Manipulator moves in 3D space (except for a planner manipulator); hence, 6
DOF required to reach every point, more than 6 DOF are termed as
kinematically redundant.
d. Joints: Revolute, Prismatic
Prismatic 1 1 0
Joint
Revolute 1 0 1
Joint
Cylindrical 2 1 1
Joint
Screw 1 1 1
Joint
Planar 3 2 1
Joint
Fixed 0 0 0
Joint
 e. End effector
f. Workspace
i. Reachable workspace (robot can reach in at least one orientation)
ii. Dexterous workspace (robot can reach in all orientations)
g. Classification of Manipulators
i. Power source
1. Hydraulic, pneumatic, electric
ii. Method of control
1. Servo, non-servo
iii. Geometry
1. Articulated RRR
2. Spherical RRP
3. SCARA RRP
4. Cylindrical RPP
5. Cartesian PPP
2. Mobile Robots
a. Components
i. Sesnors/Actuators/Onboard System.
ii. DOF: UGV typically move in 2D, UAV typically move in 3D. A UGV has 3DOF
and UAV has 6DOF.
3. Frame (Base frame, tool frame) Cartesian coordinate, polar coordinate
4. Kinematics
a. Forward Kinematics (Level 1)
i. Cartesian Space to joint space
b. Inverse Kinematics (Level 2)
c. Jacobian (Level 3): The Jacobian specifies a mapping from velocities in joint space to
velocities in Cartesian space is used to compute the static forces.
d. Singularities
5. Path vs Trajectory (Level 4)
6. Sensors for robots (GPS, encoders, vision) (Level 5)
7. Dynamics (Level 6) is a huge field of study devoted to studying the forces required to cause
motion. In order to accelerate a manipulator from rest, glide at a constant end effector
velocity, and finally decelerate to a stop, a complex set of torque functions must be applied
by the joint actuators.
8. Control (Level 7)
a. Position Control
b. Velocity Control
c. Force Control

For Further Details: ref to chapter 1 of textbook.