ME7752 - Mechanics and Control of Robots

Introductory graduate course on the basic principles underlying robots, especially 'serial robots'. We focus on kinematics, dynamics and control of such robots, with an emphasis on computer implementations of the various ideas.

These notes are (partial) hand-written transcripts of my blackboard lectures. These MATLAB codes are (sometimes) better commented versions of my live coding demos in classroom. Some additional lectures have not been fully transcribed and may be posted later. The 3D kinematics part of the course is drawn from the robotics text by John Craig.

 Lecture notes

  • Introduction to robotics. PDF.
  • Planar robots: forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, reachable workspace, and joint ranges of motion. PDF.
  • Representing 3D rigid body transforms. Translations and rotations: Rotation matrices, homogeneous transforms, Euler angles, degrees of freedom, etc. PDF.
  • Kinematics of 3D serial robots: Denavit-Hartenberg representation, forward kinematics and inverse kinematics. PDF.
  • Differential kinematics & Robot statics: Velocities & accelerations, manipulator Jacobians & kinematic singularities. PDF.
  • Dynamics in 2D: Writing equations of motion & simulation. PDF.
  • Control of robots: Basic feedback & feedback control, PID, feedback linearization, and other ad hoc control. Stability of equilibria. PDF (partial).
  • Miscellany: Trajectory optimization, parallel robots, simmechanics, computer vision (stereogrammetry).

    • Homework

    HW1, HW2, HW3, HW4, HW5, HW6.

    MATLAB codes from lecture

    Planar kinematics: Simple animation, reachable workspace, spline interpolation, inverse kinematics & tracking.
    3D transformations: Rotation and translation of frames, rotating an object, etc.
    Forward kinematics: Denavit-Hartenberg for 3R robot from lecture.
    Dynamics in 2D: Deriving equations of motion + simulation & animation.
    Control: Position regulation.
    Stewart Platform: forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, and reachable workspace.
    Simmechanics demos.