16-711: Course Description

Basic concepts and tools for the analysis, design, and control of robotic mechanisms. Topics covered include foundations of kinematics, kinematics of robotic mechanisms, review of basic systems theory, control of dynamic systems. Advanced topics will vary from year-to-year, including motion planning and collision avoidance, adaptive control, and hybrid control.

Goals of the course:

• Expose students to kinematics, dynamics, and control so that they can guide their own further learning.
• Give students a practical sense of what limits performance, and what motivates different robot designs.
• Have fun.

Topics

• 1D
  • PID, Feedforward control
  • Simulation
  • Planning
  • More realistic models, system identification
  • More sophisticated control
  • observers, estimators, Kalman filters
• 2D
  • Forward and inverse kinematics
  • Jacobians
  • Independent joint control
  • Dynamics
  • Coupled control, LQR, DP, DDP
  • Force control
• 3D
  • Representing orientations, Kinematics
  • Dynamics: 3D moment of inertia
• Optional topics
  • legged locomotion
  • mobile robot kinematics and dynamics
  • more advanced control
  • adaptive control
  • hands
  • more linear systems
  • differential geometry

Prerequisites

Graduate standing or permission of the instructor.

This course is designed to be a challenging course for graduate students in the Robotics program. A well-prepared student would have a strong background in mathematics and engineering, including multivariate calculus, differential equations, linear algebra, controls or linear systems, and classical mechanics. Some of the incoming graduate students will not be "well-prepared" as defined above. They will be expected to put in substantial additional time and effort to address these gaps. We will suggest supplementary readings and problems for those who need them.

In the simulation parts of the course, students will be expected to edit, compile, and run C programs, or be able to write equivalent programs in some other language. Students will also be expected to be able to use Matlab and Mathematica.

Readings

Textbook: Lorenzo Sciavicco and Bruno Siciliano, Modelling and Control of Robot Manipulators, Second Edition. Springer. 2000.

The textbook is a resource rather than something we directly follow. There are many other good textbooks available.

Work

• Assignments (to be developed)
• Lab Assignments (to be developed)
• Project
• There will be no exams. Your grade will be based on assignments (homeworks and labs) and your project.

Assignments

Project