Course: EW450 Introduction to Robotic Systems

3 Credits – 2 Recitation Hours – 2 Laboratory Hours


Course Description:

An introduction to the modeling and control of articulated robotics, primarily in the kinematic domain. Students develop methods for modeling and describing articulated robots including robot configurations, workcell layout, reachable and dexterous workspace, forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, and Jacobians. Methods are applied using introductory computer vision and camera modeling to accomplish pick-and-place, industrial-style tasks.


Pre-requisites:

EW200 and SM316


Course Coordinator:

Assoc. Prof. Kutzer

Textbook:

None

Course Objectives:

  1. Explain considerations associated with robot workspace and workcell layout;

  2. Compute, apply, and manipulate rotation matrices

  3. Compute, apply, and manipulate rigid body transformations;

  4. Derive, utilize, and explain the uses and limitations of forward kinematics for articulated robots;

  5. Derive, utilize, and explain the uses and limitations of inverse kinematics for articulated robots;

  6. Derive, utilize, and explain the uses and limitations of the Jacobian for articulated robots;

  7. Derive and utilize the pinhole camera model and projections

  8. Explain and account for the effects of lens distortion;

  9. Explain and apply camera calibration;

  10. Explain and apply visual fiducials for camera-based pose recovery (e.g. AprilTag); and

  11. Explain and apply robot/camera co-calibration using the "AX = XB" solution.


Topics:

  1. Robot Configuration

  2. Robotic Workcells

  3. Workspace

  4. Rigid Body Transformations

  5. Forward Kinematics

  6. Inverse Kinematics

  7. Robot Jacobian

  8. Pinhole Camera Model

  9. Camera Calibration

  10. Visual Fiducials

  11. Robot/Camera Co-Calibration