Introduction to Robotics

Introduction (industrial robot manipulator, robot vehicles, man-robot systems, biologically inspired robots, serial chain of segments and joints);  Homogenious transformations (position, orientation, pose, traslation, perspective); Scalar Denavit-Hartemberg geometric model of robot mechanism (cylindrical, spherical, SCARA, antropomorphic, spheric wrist); Vector model of robot mechanism (cylindrical, spherical, SCARA, anthropomorphic, spheric wrist);  Inverse geometry model of robot mechanism, Rotation and orientation (Euler and RPY angles, Rodrigues formula, quaternions).

Introduction to robotics is a course, where the student first meets the robots. The course deals with geometrical models of robot mechanisms in a very general way that the knowledge is efficiently used also in problems on the fields of virtual environment, machine vision and computer graphics. For the lab part of the course students are grouped into small groups to acquire skills in industrial robot programming and use of robotic CAD tools.

Students have available books with condensed  content. Within the lectures there is presented larger number of cases for each chapter. Some robot areas are presented by using "video lectures" (robots in medicine, entertainment robotics, walking robots, mobile robots, robot grippers, service robotics, robot vision, rehabilitation robotics). Regularly are invited speakers from Slovenian industry and research institutes. Occasionally are invited speakers form abroad. Lab exercises offer also work on larger number of modern industrial robots. Students cooperate in smaller groups. Special care is taken to a security issues in proximity with robots.