Modeling and Control of Robots

An overview over different types of manipulators. Kinematics: description of position and orientation of rigid bodies, the Denavit-Hartenberg convention, forward and inverse kinematics, the velocity transformations, singularities, kinematics for vehicles. Dynamics: dynamics of rigid bodies, reference frames in relative motion, equations of motion for manipulators and vehicles in closed and recursive form, elasticity. Motion Planning: point-to-point motions, interpolation and path primitives, localization of robots, mapping a robot environment. Control: feedback linearization, passivity based controllers, position and force control.

The course gives the foundation for developing robotic systems, modeling and designing manipulators. It provides comprehensive discussion of problems of service robotics and tasks encountered in outdoor environment. Applications are industrial robots, remotely operated manipulators for space and under water operations, service robots in unstructured environment.

Lectures and problem sets. Invited guest lecturers will cover specific topics.