Robot Modeling and Control

Mark W. Spong, Seth Hutchinson, M. Vidyasagar

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781119524045
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Technologie et ingénierie
• Subtopic: Robotique

A New Edition Featuring Case Studies and Examples of the Fundamentals of Robot Kinematics, Dynamics, and Control

In the 2nd Edition of Robot Modeling and Control, students will cover the theoretical fundamentals and the latest technological advances in robot kinematics. With so much advancement in technology, from robotics to motion planning, society can implement more powerful and dynamic algorithms than ever before. This in-depth reference guide educates readers in four distinct parts; the first two serve as a guide to the fundamentals of robotics and motion control, while the last two dive more in-depth into control theory and nonlinear system analysis.

With the new edition, readers gain access to new case studies and thoroughly researched information covering topics such as:

? Motion-planning, collision avoidance, trajectory optimization, and control of robots

? Popular topics within the robotics industry and how they apply to various technologies

? An expanded set of examples, simulations, problems, and case studies

? Open-ended suggestions for students to apply the knowledge to real-life situations

A four-part reference essential for both undergraduate and graduate students, Robot Modeling and Control serves as a foundation for a solid education in robotics and motion planning.

CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

Robotics is a relatively young field of modern technology that crosses traditional engineering boundaries. Understanding the complexity of robots and their application requires knowledge of electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, systems and industrial engineering, computer science, economics, and mathematics. New disciplines of engineering, such as manufacturing engineering, applications engineering, and knowledge engineering have emerged to deal with the complexity of the field of robotics and factory automation. More recently, mobile robots are increasingly important for applications like autonomous vehicles and planetary exploration.

This book is concerned with fundamentals of robotics, including kinematics, dynamics, motion planning, computer vision, and control. Our goal is to provide an introduction to the most important concepts in these subjects as applied to industrial robot manipulators, mobile robots and other mechanical systems.

The term robot was first introduced by the Czech playwright Karel Čapek in his 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots, the word robota being the Czech word for worker. Since then the term has been applied to a great variety of mechanical devices, such as teleoperators, underwater vehicles, autonomous cars, drones, etc. Virtually anything that operates with some degree of autonomy under computer control has at some point been called a robot. In this text we will focus on two types of robots, namely industrial manipulators and mobile robots.

Industrial Manipulators

An industrial manipulator of the type shown in Figure 1.1 is essentially a mechanical arm operating under computer control. Such devices, though far from the robots of science fiction, are nevertheless extremely complex electromechanical systems whose analytical description requires advanced methods, presenting many challenging and interesting research problems.

Figure 1.1 A six-axis industrial manipulator, the KUKA 500 FORTEC robot. (Photo courtesy of KUKA Robotics.)

An official definition of such a robot comes from the Robot Institute of America (RIA):

A robot is a reprogrammable, multifunctional manipulator designed to move material, parts, tools, or specialized devices through variable programmed motions for the performance of a variety of tasks.

The key element in the above definition is the reprogrammability, which gives a robot its utility and adaptability. The so-called robotics revolution is, in fact, part of the larger computer revolution.

Even this restricted definition of a robot has several features that make it attractive in an industrial environment. Among the advantages often cited in favor of the introduction of robots are decreased labor costs, increased precision and productivity, increased flexibility compared with specialized machines, and more humane working conditions as dull, repetitive, or hazardous jobs are performed by robots.

The industrial manipulator was born out of the marriage of two earlier technologies: teleoperators and numerically controlled milling machines. Teleoperators, or master-slave devices, were developed during the second world war to handle radioactive materials. Computer numerical control (CNC) was developed because of the high precision required in the machining of certain items, such as components of high performance aircraft. The first industrial robots essentially combined the mechanical linkages of the teleoperator with the autonomy and programmability of CNC machines.

The first successful applications of robot manipulators generally involved some sort of material transfer, such as injection molding or stamping, in which the robot merely attended a press to unload and either transfer or stack the finished parts. These first robots could be programmed to execute a sequence of movements, such as moving to a location A, closing a gripper, moving to a location B, etc., but had no external sensor capability. More complex applications, such as welding, grinding, deburring, and assembly, require not only more complex motion but also some form of external sensing such as vision, tactile, or force sensing, due to the increased interaction of the robot with its environment.

Figure 1.2 shows the estimated number of industrial robots worldwide between 2014 and 2020....