All posts by Peter Corke

The Robot Academy: Lessons in inverse kinematics and robot motion

By in News, robotics, Robotics Classification, robots, robots in business, Robots Podcast Tag

The Robot Academy is a new learning resource from Professor Peter Corke and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the team behind the award-winning Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. There are over 200 lessons available, all for free.

The lessons were created in 2015 for the Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. We describe our approach to creating the original courses in the article, An Innovative Educational Change: Massive Open Online Courses in Robotics and Robotic Vision. The courses were designed for university undergraduate students but many lessons are suitable for anybody, as you can easily see the difficulty rating for each lesson. Below are lessons from inverse kinematics and robot motion.

You can watch the entire masterclass on the Robot Academy website.

Introduction

In this video lecture, we will learn about inverse kinematics, that is, how to compute the robot’s joint angles given the desired pose of their end-effector and knowledge about the dimensions of its links. We will also learn about how to generate paths that lead to a smooth coordinated motion of the end-effector.

Inverse kinematics for a 2-joint robot arm using geometry

In this lesson, we revisit the simple 2-link planar robot and determine the inverse kinematic function using simple geometry and trigonometry.

Inverse kinematics for a 2-joint robot arm using algebra

You can watch the entire masterclass on the Robot Academy website.

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The Robot Academy: Lessons in image formation and 3D vision

By in News, robotics, Robotics Classification, robots, robots in business, Robots Podcast Tag
A 3D model of organic molecules created using Rhinoceros 3D and rendered with Vray. Source: Wikipedia Commons

The Robot Academy is a new learning resource from Professor Peter Corke and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the team behind the award-winning Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. There are over 200 lessons available, all for free.

The lessons were created in 2015 for the Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. We describe our approach to creating the original courses in the article, An Innovative Educational Change: Massive Open Online Courses in Robotics and Robotic Vision. The courses were designed for university undergraduate students but many lessons are suitable for anybody, as you can easily see the difficulty rating for each lesson. Below are several examples of image formation and 3D vision.

The geometry of image formation

The real world has three dimensions but an image has only two. We can use linear algebra and homogeneous coordinates to understand what’s going on. This more general approach allows us to model the positions of pixels in the sensor array and to derive relationships between points on the image and points on an arbitrary plane in the scene.

Watch the rest of the Masterclass here.

How images are formed

How is an image formed? The real world has three dimensions but an image has only two: how does this happen and what are the consequences? We can use simple geometry to understand what’s going on.

Watch the rest of the Masterclass here.

3D vision

An image is a two-dimensional projection of a three-dimensional world. The big problem with this projection is that big distant objects appear the same size as small close objects. For people, and robots, it’s important to distinguish these different situations. Let’s look at how humans and robots can determine the scale of objects and estimate the 3D structure of the world based on 2D images.

Watch the rest of the Masterclass here.

If you liked this article, you may also enjoy:

See all the latest robotics news on Robohub, or sign up for our weekly newsletter.

The Robot Academy: An open online robotics education resource

By in News, robotics, Robotics Classification, robots, robots in business, Robots Podcast Tag

The Robot Academy is a new learning resource from Professor Peter Corke and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT), the team behind the award-winning Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. There are over 200 lessons available, all for free.

Educators are encouraged to use the Academy content to support teaching and learning in class or set them as flipped learning tasks. You can easily create viewing lists with links to lessons or masterclasses. Under Resources, you can download a Robotics Toolbox and Machine Vision Toolbox, which are useful for simulating classical arm-type robotics, such as kinematics, dynamics, and trajectory generation.

The lessons were created in 2015 for the Introduction to Robotics and Robotic Vision courses. We describe our approach to creating the original courses in the article, An Innovative Educational Change: Massive Open Online Courses in Robotics and Robotic Vision. The courses were designed for university undergraduate students but many lessons are suitable for anybody, see the difficulty rating on each lesson.

Under Masterclasses, students can choose a subject and watch a set of videos related to that particular topic. Single lessons can offer a short training segment or a refresher. Three online courses, Introducing Robotics, are also offered.

Below are two examples of the single-course and masterclasses. We encourage everyone to take a look at the QUT Robot Academy by visiting our website.

Single Lesson

Out and about with robots

In this video, we look at a diverse range of real-world robots and discuss what they do and how they do it.

Masterclass

Robot joint control: Introduction (Video 1 of 12)

In this video, students learn how we make robot joints move to the angles or positions that are required to achieve the desired end-effector motion. This is the job of the robot’s joint controller. In the lecture, we will take discuss the realms of control theory.

Robot joint control: Architecture (video 2 of 12)

In this lecture, we discuss a robot joint is a mechatronic system comprising motors, sensors, electronics and embedded computing that implements a feedback control system.

Robot joint control: Actuators (video 3 of 12)

Actuators are the components that actually move the robot’s joint. So, let’s look at a few different actuation technologies that are used in robots.

To watch the rest of the video series, visit their website.

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