What is Robotics? Robotics is a technology that deals with design of robots.

What is Robots? Slave Machine! It can be intelligent or stupid, all credits goes to the designer who designs it.

Robotics definition from Book: Robotics is integrating the systems (actuators and sensors) to achieve planned and accurate motion. Where it came from? It uses various technologies such as mechanical, electronics, software, biomechanics, control systems, machine design, vision, Artificial Intelligence, Neural networks and cognitive science. There are no clear boundaries about which technology will play a major role in a particular robot. All depends on the type of Robot designed. For technical freaks: Robotics is all about designing Robots. First and foremost point to all beginners , all robots will not be having 2 hands, 2 legs and one head which you normally see in movies etc, Those are humanoids. Robots are classified into the following types. Industrial: Used for machine tending, welding, painting and Assembling etc. Cartesian Robots

Spherical Robots

Articulated Robots

Gantry Robots

Cylindrical Robots

Parallel Robots

Used for Car assembling, welding, painting and machine tending.

Pet Robots:

Used for entertaining human begins, it can play games etc. Service Robots: Used for clean floors, cook surveillance and security purpose.

Tele Robots: Mostly this will be placed in the dangerous environments; humans operate these robots via communication protocols. Mobile Robots: This is nothing but Automatic Guided Vehicles used for transporting materials, this always do non repetitive tasks.

Scope of Robots: Do you think robotics sound interesting but the scope is limited when it comes to career point of view? Think again after reading the following points. Today, Robots can perform job better than us. They are used to handle the jobs in dirty, dangerous and dull environment. Robots have broader scope when it comes to mass production of goods where it can replace low cost labours who are working in packing, manufacturing and assembling department, which makes the robots commercial. Hence this technology has lot and lots of scope in near future.

Let us build Robots:

Take something; a mechanical device it can be wood, metal or plastic choose the right one based on the environment, this is called as actuator in Robotics terms. Basically this means muscles for Robots. You can use pneumatic, hydraulic or electronics technology for movement of the mechanical device.

Fig : Actuators Pneumatic Actuators-> Movement caused by air.

Hydraulic Actuators -> Movement caused by liquid

Electronics Actuators -> Movement caused by magnetism and electronics

You need to fit the mechanical device to motors (electronics actuators) or air compressor (Pneumatic actuators) or liquid pump (Hydraulic actuators).

So you made the robot to move, how do you know the robot has reached its destination? You need sensors for it. There are so many sensors available for this purpose. Rotary sensors, optical sensors, ultra sonic sensors, photo electric sensors, vision sensors, linear sensors, capacitive sensors, inductive sensors, etc., Let us see more about these sensor in the forth coming tutorials.

Robot uses mechanical device (actuator) for movement and sensors to find out where the actuator is? But who is responsible to decide where the actuator (mechanical device) should move and who monitors sensors? Even though the sensor gives the feedback it should be received properly and processed by someone who is intelligent! Based on the feedback given by the sensor the operation is performed by controlling the actuators, this done is done by Controllers, there are again several systems or technologies available to do this job. PLCs, microcontrollers, microprocessors, etc based on the requirement of the design these components can be chosen. Controllers are the brain of Robots; we can feed programs into it and make it work as per the functionality or operations of the robot. Boundary of technologies in Robotics: Mechanical Domain: Electronics Domain: Pneumatic and Hydraulic Actuators are related to mechanical domain. Controllers, motors Actuators and Sensors are related to electronics domain.

Software Domain: Programming the controllers for driving the actuators and measuring the feedback from sensors are related to software domain. There are several sub domains, under these major domains; Mechanical Domain: Biomechanics, Mechanics, Dynamics, Kinematics and Machine design.

Electronics Domain: Software Domain:

Control systems, Sensors, PLC, Embedded systems, VLSI, DSP technologies. Artificial Intelligence, Neural Networks, Vision, Cognitive science and NLP.

Way to learn this technology?

You need not be an engineer to become a Robotician. All you need to know is basic maths and physics and very little knowledge in electronics and programming to take the first step. First step: Start developing a wheeled Robot, which will basically have DC motors along with wheel, make it to move and control its movement by using mathematics (Mensuration or measurement principle). You will see the fusion of Mathematics and Software. We will go deeper and we will find out how the motor torque and RPM affects the mechanical and software domains respectively. Click here to find more about this project. Second step: Start reading the sensors part, this content will be posted soon. Third Step: Control engineering about closed loop and open loop, P type, PI and PID controller. Fourth step: Learn Kinematics principle, Centre of gravity, Torque, Equilibrium, moment of inertia, Vibration, ergonomic design in mechanical side. Fifth step: Estimate the power needed to make the actuator to move from one place to another place! This you will understand if after reaching step 3. Construct electronics circuits for this by choosing the power supply. Six step: To create robot with sixth sense. You need to be strong software algorithms and system software programming.

Syllabus Survey:

1. INTRODUCTION

12

Geometric configuration of robots Manipulators Drive systems Internal and external sensors End effectors Control systems Robot programming languages and applications Introduction to robotic vision. >>>>> This unit is basic information related to Electronics, Software and General Mechanical structure of Robots. If you read this you will be familiar about various types of robots and various tool used in robot.
2. ROBOT ARM KINEMATICS 9

Direct and inverse kinematics Rotation matrices Composite rotation matrices Euler angle representation Homogenous transformation Denavit Hattenberg representation and various arm configuration. >>>>> This unit is bit complicated related to mechanical and mathematics, if you read this unit you will be strong in placing the robot end effectors(End point in Robot) at the desired point. 3. ROBOT ARM DYNAMICS 7

Lagrange Euler formulation, joint velocities Kinetic energy Potential energy and motion equations Generalised DAlembert equations of motion. >>>>>>> This unit is again related to mechanics and Mathematics, if you read this unit you will be strong in amount of load which the robot can pick.

4.

PLANNING OF MANIPULATOR TRAJECTORIES

General consideration on trajectory planning joint interpolation & Cartesian path trajectories.

>>>>>> This is related to software and mathematics, if you read this you can design the path which the robot should follow in picking and placing the components, even you can make the robot to write A, B, C, D and it can cook Round Dosa. etc 5. CONTROL OF ROBOT MANIPULATORS 10

PID control computed, torque technique Near minimum time control Variable structure control Non-linear decoupled feedback control Resolved motion control and adaptive control. >>>>>>> It is related to electronics domain, ie control systems. If you learn this unit you will be strong in measuring the robot position, controlling the actuator such as motor speed and manipulating actuators based on the feedback from sensors. Job market in this technology: Register in EPRLABs to the details about this. We will mail you the job openings before that we believe you have knowledge in this domain. Author Purushothaman R Founder - EPRLABs