Foundations of Robotics presents the fundamental concepts and methodologies for the analysis, design, and control of robot manipulators.

A modern and unified treatment of the mechanics, planning, and control of robots, suitable for a first course in robotics.

Selected contributions to the Workshop WAFR 2002, held December 15-17, 2002, Nice, France. This fifth biannual Workshop on Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics focuses on algorithmic issues related to robotics and automation. The design and analysis of robot algorithms raises fundamental questions in computer science, computational geometry, mechanical modeling, operations research, control theory, and associated fields. The highly selective program highlights significant new results such as algorithmic models and complexity bounds. The validation of algorithms, design concepts, or techniques is the common thread running through this focused collection.

Based on the successful Modelling and Control of Robot Manipulators by Sciavicco and Siciliano (Springer, 2000), Robotics provides the basic know-how on the foundations of robotics: modelling, planning and control. It has been expanded to include coverage of mobile robots, visual control and motion planning. A variety of problems is raised throughout, and the proper tools to find engineering-oriented solutions are introduced and explained. The text includes coverage of fundamental topics like kinematics, and trajectory planning and related technological aspects including actuators and sensors. To impart practical skill, examples and case studies are carefully worked out and interwoven through the text, with frequent resort to simulation. In addition, end-of-chapter exercises are proposed, and the book is accompanied by an electronic solutions manual containing the MATLAB® code for computer problems; this is available free of charge to those adopting this volume as a textbook for courses.

Introduces the fundamentals aspects of the topic from history, modelling, control, and system integration. The last decade has witnessed an increasing interest in the more active use of soft materials in robotic systems. Having a soft body like the ones in biological systems can potentially provide a robot with superior capabilities.

This book gathers the outcomes of the thirteenth Workshop on the Algorithmic Foundations of Robotics (WAFR), the premier event for showcasing cutting-edge research on algorithmic robotics. The latest WAFR, held at Universidad Politécnica de Yucatán in Mérida, México on December 9–11, 2018, continued this tradition. This book contains fifty-four papers presented at WAFR, which highlight the latest research on fundamental algorithmic robotics (e.g., planning, learning, navigation, control, manipulation, optimality, completeness, and complexity) demonstrated through several applications involving multi-robot systems, perception, and contact manipulation. Addressing a diverse range of topics in papers prepared by expert contributors, the book reflects the state of the art and outlines future directions in the field of algorithmic robotics.

Robotics engineering has progressed from an infant industry in 1961 to one including over 500 robot and allied firms around the world in 1989. During this growth period, many robotics books have been published, so me of which have served as industry standards. Until recently, the design of robotics sys tems has been primarily the responsibility of the mechanical engineer, and their application in factories has been the responsibility of the manufacturing engineer. Few robotics books address the many systems issues facing electron ics engineers or computer programmers. The mid-1980s witnessed a major change in the robotics field. The develop ment of advanced sensor systems (particularly vision), improvements in the intelligence area, and the desire to integrate groups of robots working together in local work cells or in factory-wide systems have greatly increased the partic ipation of electronics engineers and computer programmers. Further, as ro bots ga in mobility, they are being used in completely new areas, such as construction, firefighting, and underwater exploration, and the need for com puters and smart sensors has increased. Fundamentals af Rabaties Engineering is aimed at the practicing electrical engineer or computer analyst who needs to review the fundamentals of engi neering as applied to robotics and to understand the impact on system design caused by constraints unique to robotics. Because there are many good texts covering mechanical engineering topics, this book is limited to an overview of those topics and the effects they have on electrical design and system pro grams.

Modern robotics dates from the late 1960s, when progress in the development of microprocessors made possible the computer control of a multiaxial manipulator. Since then, robotics has evolved to connect with many branches of science and engineering, and to encompass such diverse fields as computer vision, artificial intelligence, and speech recognition. This book deals with robots - such as remote manipulators, multifingered hands, walking machines, flight simulators, and machine tools - that rely on mechanical systems to perform their tasks. It aims to establish the foundations on which the design, control and implementation of the underlying mechanical systems are based. The treatment assumes familiarity with some calculus, linear algebra, and elementary mechanics; however, the elements of rigid-body mechanics and of linear transformations are reviewed in the first chapters, making the presentation self-contained. An extensive set of exercises is included. Topics covered include: kinematics and dynamics of serial manipulators with decoupled architectures; trajectory planning; determination of the angular velocity and angular acceleration of a rigid body from point data; inverse and direct kinematics manipulators; dynamics of general parallel manipulators of the platform type; and the kinematics and dynamics of rolling robots. Since the publication of the previous edition there have been numerous advances in both the applications of robotics (including in laprascopy, haptics, manufacturing, and most notably space exploration) as well as in the theoretical aspects (for example, the proof that Husty's 40th-degree polynomial is indeed minimal - mentioned as an open question in the previous edition).

This book presents extensive research on two main problems in robotics: the path planning problem and the multi-robot task allocation problem. It is the first book to provide a comprehensive solution for using these techniques in large-scale environments containing randomly scattered obstacles. The research conducted resulted in tangible results both in theory and in practice. For path planning, new algorithms for large-scale problems are devised and implemented and integrated into the Robot Operating System (ROS). The book also discusses the parallelism advantage of cloud computing techniques to solve the path planning problem, and, for multi-robot task allocation, it addresses the task assignment problem and the multiple traveling salesman problem for mobile robots applications. In addition, four new algorithms have been devised to investigate the cooperation issues with extensive simulations and comparative performance evaluation. The algorithms are implemented and simulated in MATLAB and Webots.

* Provides an elegant introduction to the geometric concepts that are important to applications in robotics * Includes significant state-of-the art material that reflects important advances, connecting robotics back to mathematical fundamentals in group theory and geometry * An invaluable reference that serves a wide audience of grad students and researchers in mechanical engineering, computer science, and applied mathematics