• Text book: Craig, J. J., Introduction to Robotics, Mechanics and Control, 3rd Edition, Addison Wesley, 2005 (available from Unibooks)
• Lecture notes available as printed copy from the Image & Copy Centre at the beginning of the semester and electronic copy available via MyUni;

Recommended Reading:

• LOW, K.H., “Robotics, principles and systems modeling,” 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 2004
• Schilling, R. J., Fundamentals of Robotics - Analysis & Control, Prentice Hall, 1991;
• Lewis, F. L., Abdallah, C. T., Dawson, D. M., Control of robot manipulators, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993;
• Web sites, such as: www-sop.inria.fr/saga/personnel/merlet/merlet_eng.html.
• Other materials including journal and conference papers provided through out the semester.

Course related materials including announcements, lecture notes, tutorial materials, project information and so on will be made available in MyUni. Students are asked to access MyUni regularly (preferred at least once a week) for the course related information and materials throught out the semester. For more information, please visit MyUni Support.

• Lectures to cover the contents described in Section 1.1 course description and enhanced by videos and real life examples.
• Tutorials to support the covered contents adopting problem-solving principles.
• Quizzes and assignments for students to exercise the knowledge learned.
• Lab sessions to exercise and integrate the contents covered in the lectures as well as to extend further beyond.

In addition to fours hours a week for lectures, tutorial and project activities in classes, averaged three hours per week are estimated to be necessary to review the contents learned and work on assignments, tutorial questions and one team based project to achieve good learning results.

Introduction to robotic systems (1 hours lecture, 1 hour lab preparation)

• definitions for various robotic terms
• industrial robots and applications
• mobile robots and applications
• parallel robots and applications
• New development and trends of robotics

Spatial descriptions (2 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial, 2 hours lab)

• coordinate frames
• coordinate translation and rotation
• homogeneous transformation
• compound transformation
• raw-pitch-yaw and euler angles
• inversed rotation matrix

Kinematics (4 hours lectures, 2 hours tutorial, 4 hours lab)

• forward kinematics
• denavit-hartenberg notation
• joint space and cartesian space
• inverse kinematics
• solvability of the inverse kinematics problems
• algebraic solution and geometric solution
• pieper’s solution
• kinemtaics of parallel robots

Jacobians (2 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial, 2 hours lab)

• linear and rotational velocity of rigid bodies
• motion of the links of a robot
• velocity propagation from link to link
• angular and linear velocities of robot links
• Jacobians
• singularities
• static forces propagate from link to link
• Jacobians in force domain

Dynamics (4 hours lectures, 2 hours tutorial, 4 hours lab)

• Lagrangian formulation
• Kinetic and potential energy
• Euler dynamic formulation
• the force and torque acting on a link

Trajectory generation (2 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial, 4 hours lab)

• introduction
• joint space schemes
• cartesian schemes

Position and force control (2 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial, 4 hours lab)

• control of manipulators
• control law partitioning
• trajectory following control
• nonlinear and varying systems
• model-based control for manipulators
• current industrial robot control systems

In total, there are 46 hours lectures, tutorials, and labs. The number of hours for lectures, tutorial and labs are subject to vary slightly.

Continuous assessment is required which needs the students to pass the assignments (averaged) and project to sit for the final examination.

• Assignments: Assignments will be set and related to the topics described in Section 4.3 learning activity summary.
• Lab reports: Lab reports will be required to be submitted.
• Final exam: The final exam will be set to test the robotic knowledge learned.

Assignments and lab reports need to be submitted online electronically before the deadline. Every one day late submission (both assignments and lab reports) will incur 10% mark deduction. Due dates may be extended with genuine reasons which needs to communicate with the lecturer face-to-face or by emails. The turn-around timeline on assessments and the provision of feedback is two weeks after the submission deadline.