Robotics

Robotics brings together several very different engineering areas and skills. There is metalworking for the body. There is mechanics for mounting the wheels on the axles, connecting them to the motors and keeping the body in balance. You need electronics to power the motors and connect the sensors to the controllers. At last you need the software to understand the sensors and drive the robot around.

The Robotics Wiki Book

This book tries to cover all the key areas of robotics as a hobby. When possible examples from industrial robots will be addressed too.

You'll notice very few "exact" values in these texts. Instead, vague terms like "small", "heavy" and "light" will be used. This is because most of the time you'll have a lot of freedom in picking these values, and all robot projects are unique in available materials.

Introduction

Contributors

Design Basics

Note to potential contributors: this section could be used to discuss the basics of robot design/construction.

1. What you should know
2. Physical Design
3. Design software
4. Tools and Equipment
5. Electronic Components
6. Mechanical Components
7. Building materials
8. Basic Programming

Physical Construction

This section could be used to discuss various means through which robots are constructed.

1. The Platform
2. Construction Techniques
3. Resourcefulness

Robot control

This section could be used to discuss the control method and control algorithm introduces and analyzes the robot, including the position control, trajectory control, force control, torque control, compliance control, hybrid force / position control, decomposition motion control, variable structure control, adaptive control and hierarchical control, fuzzy control, learning control, neural control and evolutionary control, intelligent control.

1. The basic principles of robot control
   1. Basic control principles
   2. Servo control system
2. Position control robot
   1. DC drive system modeling
   2. The basic structure of the position control
   3. Single joint position controller
   4. Multi-joint position controller
3. Compliant control robot
   1. The basic concept of supple movement
   2. Active impedance control
   3. Hybrid force and position control
   4. Displacement and force supple movements hybrid control
4. Decomposition of movement of the robot control
   1. Motion control principle decomposition
   2. Decomposition velocity control
   3. Decomposition motion acceleration control
   4. Decomposition motility control
5. Variable structure control of robot
   1. The basic principle of variable structure control
   2. Sliding Mode Control Robot
   3. Robot mode variable structure control sample
6. Adaptive control robot
   1. State of the model control system and the main structure
   2. Robot model reference adaptive controller
   3. Robot self-tuning adaptive controller
   4. Linear perturbation adaptive robot controller
7. Intelligent robot control
   1. The basic concept of intelligent control
   2. Classification of intelligent control system
   3. Hierarchical intelligent robot assembly system
   4. Adaptive Fuzzy Control Robot
   5. Multi-fingered hand neural control
   6. The evolution of the mobile robot autonomous navigation control

Components

This section could be used to discuss components used in robotics or the making of robots.

1. Power Sources
2. Actuation Devices
   1. Motors
   2. Stepper Motors
   3. Shape Memory Alloys
   4. Air muscle
   5. Linear Electromagnetic
   6. Piezoelectric Actuators
   7. Pneumatics/Hydraulics
   8. Miniature internal combustion engines
3. Grippers
4. Audio
5. Video

Computer Control

This section could be used to discuss the things involved with controlling robots via computers.

1. Control Architectures
   1. Reactive Systems
   2. Sense-Plan-Act
   3. Brooks' Subsumption Architecture ( w:Subsumption architecture )
   4. Hybrid Systems
   5. Swarm Robotics
2. The Interface
   1. Personal Computers
   2. Single Board Computers and multichip modules
   3. Microcontrollers
   4. Remote Control
   5. Networks

Sensors

Sensors that a robot uses generally fall into three different categories:

1. Environment sensors tell the robot what is happening around it
   1. Thermal Sensors
   2. Pressure Sensors
   3. Ranging Sensors
   4. Touch Sensors
2. Feedback sensors tell the robot what it is actually doing, and
3. Communication sensors allow a human or computer to provide a robot other information.

Sensors aren't perfect. When you use a sensor on your robot there will be a lot of times where the sensors acts funny. It could miss an obstacle, or see one where none is. Key to successfully using sensors is knowing how they function and what they really measure.

• Real World Sensors
• Digital image Acquisition

Navigation

1. Navigation
   1. Localization
   2. Collision Avoidance
   3. Exploration
   4. Mapping
   5. Trajectory Planning

Exotic Robots

This section could be used to cover "special" robots.

1. Special Robot brains
2. BEAM
3. Cooperating Robots
4. Hazardous Environment Robots
5. Types of Robots
   1. Contest Robot
   2. Entertainment Robot
   3. Arms
   4. Wheeled
   5. Tracked
   6. Walkers (with legs)
6. Modular and fractal Robots
7. The LEGO World
   1. LEGO Robots
   2. Introduction to the RCX
   3. Programming the RCX

See also

• The Computer Revolution/Artificial Intelligence/Robotics

Resources

Resources

Papers on various robot related subjects