Search Results for: one joint

In a serial-link manipulator arm each joint has to support all the links between itself and the end of the robot. We introduce the recursive Newton-Euler algorithm which allows us to compute the joint torques given the robot joint positions, velocities and accelerations and the link inertial parameters.

We introduce serial-link robot manipulators, the sort of robot arms you might have seen working in factories doing tasks like welding, spray painting or material transfer. We will learn how we can compute the pose of the robot’s end-effector given knowledge of the robot’s joint angles and the dimensions of its links.

We describe inertia of the robot as a matrix which represents how inertia of a joint depends on the position of all the joints, and how the torque on one joint depends on the acceleration of other joints.

We learn a method for succinctly describing the structure of a serial-link manipulator in terms of its Denavit-Hartenberg parameters, a widely used notation in robotics.

We learn to compute a trajectory that involves simultaneous smooth motion of many robot joints.

We consider the most general type of serial-link robot manipulator which has six joints and can position and orient its end-effector in 3D space.

So far we have worked out the torques on a robot’s joints based on joint position, velocity and acceleration. For simulation we want the opposite, to know its motion given the torques applied to the joints. This is called the forward dynamics problem.

Building a highly accurate robot is not trivial yet we can perform fine positioning tasks like threading a needle using hand-eye coordination. For a robot we call this visual servoing.

We consider a robot with four joints that moves its end-effector in 3D space.

We will learn about inverse kinematics, that is, how to compute the robot’s joint angles given the desired pose of their end-effector and knowledge about the dimensions of its links. We will also learn about how to generate paths that lead to smooth coordinated motion of the end-effector.