DT211/3 - Robot Technology Fundamentals
Year: 2007-2008
You can access the course syllabus here. The information on the course labs is available at the bottom of the page.
Lectures
The slides from the lectures, along with a synopsis of each lecture are listed below:
The first lecture examines the representation of robots in mass media (movies and tv) and highlights the differences between these popular representations and the reality of the current state of the art in robotics. It overviews the applications of current robot technology. The lecture also examines the ethic isses and risks associated with Artificial Intelligence and Robotics research. It finishes with an overview of the course.
The lectures on the basics of electrical science, reviews: static electricity, conductors, insulators, electrical flow, electrical circuits, voltage (volts [V]), current (ampere [I]), resistance (ohms), electrical fields, capacitance, magnetic fields, inductance, force (Newtons [F], F=Mass*acceleration), unit of work (joules[W], W=F*distance]), power (watts [P], P=W/time), source, circuit, load, electrical charge (coulomb [Q], Q=I*time), V=P/I,Ohm's law,simple DC circuits (series & parallel), alternating current,AC/DC Motor design.
The introductory lecture covers the following topics: defining what is meant by the term robot; introducing a taxonomy of robots; discussing the applications of robot technology; discussing the advantages of robot technology; introducing the main components of a robot system: power supply, sensors, control systems and actuators
The lecture on robot actuators covers the following topics; what are actuators, types of robot joints, actuator control (servo [closed-loop] versus non-servo [open-loop]), different types of actuators (electrical motors - including stepper motors -, artificial muscles, pneumatic and hydraulic actuators).
The lecture on robot locomotion covers the following topics; locomotion concepts found in nature; the mechanical complexity required for certain types of locomotion; the energy efficiency of different locomotion mechanisms in different environments; degrees of freedom; configurations of legged and wheeled robots; the tradeoffs between legged and wheeled locomtion for robots.
This lectures reviews some basic mathematics that will be used during our discussions of robotics kinemantics, including: the relationship between radians and degrees; sin, cos, and tan; 3D co-ordinate references frames; points, lines, vectors and matrices; rotations in 3D space.
This lectures begins by defining what is meant by the term kinematics, following this we distinguishes between forward and inverse kinematic models, we then introduce a represenation of the mobile robots pose on a 2D plane and distinguish between the global and local frames of references, finally we manually construct a model that allows us to translate between local and global models of robot kinematics based on the contibution of each wheel to the velocity and orientation of a robot at a given instant.
This lectures introduces some basic constraints on the motion of different types of robot wheels. These wheel constraint are then formally defined. We then use these constraints to map from the local to the global frame of reference. The lecture finishes with a discussion regarding robot maneuverability.
The lecture on sensors discusses what sensors are used for in robotic systems, highlights the broad range of sensors available for robots, introduces a classification framework for sensors (proprioceptive versus exteroceptive, active versus passive), and introduces and defines different characteristics that can be used to determine the performance and applicability of a sensor (including: cost, size, weight, type of output, interfacing, resolution, sensitivity and cross-sensitivity, linearity, bandwidth, reliability, accuracy, repeatability, range and dynamic range), highlights the issue of sensor error and distinguishes between systematic and random error, and finishes by describing different types of sensors (including touch and tactile sensors, wheel/motor sensors, heading sensors (gyroscopes), ground based beacons, active ranging sensors, motion speed sensors and vision based sensors.
The lecture addresses the following issues: What is localisation? localisation challenges, noise and aliasing, odometric position estimation, to localize or not to localize, belief representation, map representation, probabilistic map-based localization, other examples of localization systems, autonomous map building.