Description
This Specialization provides a rigorous treatment of spatial motion and the dynamics of rigid bodies, employing representations from modern screw theory and the product of exponentials formula. Students with a freshman-level engineering background will quickly learn to apply these tools to analysis, planning, and control of robot motion. Students’ understanding of the mathematics of robotics will be solidified by writing robotics software. Students will test their software on a free state-of-the-art cross-platform robot simulator, allowing each student to have an authentic robot programming experience with industrial robot manipulators and mobile robots without purchasing expensive robot hardware. It is highly recommended that Courses 1-6 of the Specialization are taken in order, since the material builds on itself.
In the projects, students build on provided free software, written in multiple languages, allowing each student to choose their favorite language. Projects include writing a simulator for a robot arm, writing a robot motion planner, and writing software for trajectory planning and feedback control of a mobile manipulator consisting of a wheeled mobile robot and a robot arm. All software is tested on the robot simulator.
