Excedify - Engineering Online Courses

In this robotics online course, we will know what robots are used for and how they facilitate our lives in different fields, and we will be discussing more about the different forms a robot can take based on the application it serves and needs of the user. After designing the robot and identifying its main features, we will start controlling it by first determining how to transform  orders  given  to  move  the  robot  joints  into  the  position  of  the  robot’s  end  effector, which is the main tool to be used by the robot.  This transformation process is also known as forward kinematics.

Not  all  applications  require  the  usage  of  forward  kinematics;  in  fact,  most  control  applications  require  the  robot’s  end  effector  to  reach  a  desired  position,   and  the  controller is responsible for determining the joint angles to achieve this desired motion. This process  is  known  as  inverse  kinematics  and  will  be  discussed  further  along  with  different approaches to get the viable joint orientations. With our competency in utilizing the forward and inverse position kinematic transformations, we start to develop a similar approach in getting robot joint and end effector velocity relations. 

The Jacobian Matrix shows the relationship between velocity of joint and task spaces. We will understand how the Jacobian matrix is calculated and why do we use it in getting robot  velocities,  accelerations,  and  forces.  All the previous  discussion did  not  involve  forces  acting  on  the  robot,  but  we  are  interested  in  robot  force  dynamics  as  we  need  accurate controllers that take in consideration forces acting on the robot. We will discuss energy based dynamic analysis known  as  the  LaGrange approach and compare it to the conventional Newtonian approach.

All  robot  motions  can  be  controlled  in  versatile  manners  to  provide  different  trajectories involving the desired positions for the end effector. Based on how smooth we want  the  robot  motion and  how  fast  we  want  to  perform  the  motion,  we  will  discuss  different trajectory calculation algorithms and compare them.  

Finally, by the end of the course, we will discuss different applied controllers used in robotics and how they aim to minimize the error between the desired and current positions of the robot joints based on sensory  data  acquired  from  the  robot  assembly.  Furthermore,  we  will  apply  our  knowledge  and  set  of  skills  acquired  throughout  the  course  on  a  case  study  related  to  robotics in the 3D printing field.