Meta Description: A study of the most important concepts in modern robotics, including kinematics, dynamics, motion planning, and control of mobile robots and robotic arms.
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No prior knowledge required
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If so, then the specialization “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design, and Control” may be right for you. Consisting of six short courses, the specialization is serious preparation for serious students hoping to work in the field of robotics or pursue advanced studies. It is not a sample.
In Course 1 of the specialization, Fundamentals of Robotic Motion, you will learn basic material about robot configurations, for both serial robot mechanics and closed-chain robots. You will learn about configuration space (C-space), degrees of freedom, C-space topology, explicit and implicit representations of configurations, and holonomic and non-holonomic constraints. You will also learn how to represent spatial velocities and forces as twists and vortices. This material is at the heart of the study of anything that moves (e.g., robots).
This course is based on the book “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design and Control” (Lynch and Park, Cambridge University Press 2017). You can purchase the book or use a free PDF. You will build on a robotics software library in the programming language of your choice (whether Python, Mathematica or MATLAB) and use the free V-REP robot simulator, which allows you to work with world-class robots in the comfort of your own home and without any financial investment.
If so, then the specialization “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design, and Control” may be right for you. Consisting of six short courses, the specialization is serious preparation for serious students hoping to work in the field of robotics or pursue advanced studies. It is not a sample.
In Course 2 of the specialization, Robot Kinematics, you will learn to solve forward kinematics (calculating the configuration of the robot’s “hand” based on the joint values) using the exponential product formula. Your effort in Course 1 will pay off, as forward kinematics is easy with the tools you learned. You will then learn about velocity and static kinematics related to joint velocities and forces/torques for end-effector twists and turns, inverse kinematics (calculating the joint values to achieve a desired configuration of the “hand”), and kinematics of robots with closed chains.
This course is based on the book “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design and Control” (Lynch and Park, Cambridge University Press 2017). You can purchase the book or use a free PDF. You will build on a robotics software library in the programming language of your choice (whether Python, Mathematica or MATLAB) and use the free V-REP robot simulator, which allows you to work with world-class robots in the comfort of your own home and without any financial investment.
If so, then the specialization “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design, and Control” may be right for you. Consisting of six short courses, the specialization is serious preparation for serious students hoping to work in the field of robotics or pursue advanced studies. It is not a sample.
In Course 3 of the specialization, Robot Dynamics, you will learn efficient numerical algorithms for forward dynamics (calculating the acceleration of the robot based on the configuration, velocity, and joint forces and torques) and inverse dynamics (calculating the required joint forces and torques based on the configuration, velocity, and acceleration of the robot). The former is useful for simulation, and the latter is useful for robot control. You will also learn how to design robot trajectories under dynamic constraints.
This course is based on the book “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design and Control” (Lynch and Park, Cambridge University Press 2017). You can purchase the book or use a free PDF. You will build on a robotics software library in the programming language of your choice (whether Python, Mathematica or MATLAB) and use the free V-REP robot simulator, which allows you to work with world-class robots in the comfort of your own home and without any financial investment.
If so, then the specialization “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design, and Control” may be right for you. Consisting of six short courses, the specialization is serious preparation for serious students hoping to work in the field of robotics or pursue advanced studies. It is not a sample.
In Course 4 of the specialization, Robot Motion Planning and Control, you will learn key concepts in producing robot motion: planning motion for a robot in the presence of obstacles, and controlling real-time feedback to track the planned motion. Chapter 10, Motion Planning, of the textbook “Modern Robotics” covers basic material such as obstacles in C-space, graphs and trees, and graph search, as well as classical and modern motion planning techniques, such as network-based motion planning, random sample planners, and virtual potential fields. Chapter 11, Robot Control, covers motion control, force control, and hybrid motion and force control.
This course is based on the book “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design and Control” (Lynch and Park, Cambridge University Press 2017). You can purchase the book or use a free PDF. You will build on a robotics software library in the programming language of your choice (whether Python, Mathematica or MATLAB) and use the free V-REP robot simulator, which allows you to work with world-class robots in the comfort of your own home and without any financial investment.
If so, then the specialization “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design, and Control” may be right for you. Consisting of six short courses, the specialization is serious preparation for serious students hoping to work in the field of robotics or pursue advanced studies. It is not a sample.
In Course 5 of the specialization, Manipulation of Robots and Wheeled Mobile Robots, we delve into advanced topics in robotics. Chapter 12, Grasping and Manipulation, of the textbook “Modern Robotics” covers the model of kinematics and forces between rigid bodies in contact, and applies the model to the analysis and design of robot grasping and other manipulation tasks. Chapter 13, Wheeled Mobile Robots, covers modeling, motion design, and feedback control of wheeled mobile robots, and concludes with a discussion of the control of mobile manipulators consisting of a mobile base with wheels and a robotic hand.
This course is based on the book “Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Design and Control” (Lynch and Park, Cambridge University Press 2017). You can purchase the book or use a free PDF. You will build on a robotics software library in the programming language of your choice (whether Python, Mathematica or MATLAB) and use the free V-REP robot simulator, which allows you to work with world-class robots in the comfort of your own home and without any financial investment.
The final project of the Modern Robotics specialization deals with mobile manipulation: simultaneous control of the motion of a mobile base with wheels and a robotic hand to achieve a manipulation task. This project combines several topics from the specialization, including path planning, odometry for mobile robots, and feedback control. Starting from the Modern Robotics software library provided to you (written in Python, Mathematica, and MATLAB), and in the software you wrote for previous courses, you will develop software to plan and control the motion of a mobile manipulator to perform a lifting and lowering task. You will test your software on the KUKA youBot, a mobile manipulator consisting of a mobile base with wheels, a 5-jointed robotic hand, and a gripper. The advanced and free V-REP simulator will be used to simulate the task.
