LEARNING OUTCOMES

The present course is intended for providing the students with the fundamental mechatronic concepts and related modelling and simulation technologies enabling the realization of reconfigurable, soft, dexterous manipulating and mobile, modular robotic structures. Modelling and simulation of distributed sensorial, actuation and control systems are as well included in the course educational targets.

AIMS AND LEARNING OUTCOMES

The course will provide and polish the fundamental skills and knowledge of advanced kinematic geometry. On this basis, the students will be ready to specialize and deepen their abilities in order to address various specific problems arising in their own research or engineering practice.

If possible, the final lectures and the tutorials will be targeted to address areas and applications of particular influence to the class. If suitable some of the assignments may be closely related students’ own thesis and research projects.

An important emphasis of the course is on fine-tuning the further developing the students’ geometrical intuitions for rigid-body motion in three-dimensional space. For this purpose, visualizations and classical geometry are used in parallel with rigorous mathematical formalisms.

PREREQUISITES

Abstract linear algebra, classical spatial geometry, classical mechanics, vector analysis, basic notions of screw theory.

TEACHING METHODS

The lectures will cover the topics of the syllabus. The students are expected to take notes and answer questions during the lecture/tutorial sessions. Homework will be assigned continuously and marked. The work on the assignments will play a key role in the final evaluation. A number of tutorials will introduce the use of Maple for modelling mechanisms; one of the assignments will focus on these skills.

SYLLABUS/CONTENT

1.  Linear spaces, screws, twists, and wrenches: the algebra and geometry of screw theory.

2. Freedom and constraint analysis, synthesis, and motion capabilities of parallel mechanism.

3. A modern view of classical notions in the kinematic geometry of planar mechanisms.

4. Input-output mechanical devices. Velocity and singularity analysis.

5. Statics of mechanisms. Mechanism singularities.

6. Acceleration in rigid-body systems, introduction to dynamics. Introductory notions in the flexibility analysis of mechanisms.

RECOMMENDED READING/BIBLIOGRAPHY

Lecture notes and slides.

Hunt, K., 1978, Kinematic geometry of mechanisms, Clarendon Press.

Murray, R.M, Li, Z., and Sastry, S.S., 1994, Mathematical introduction to robotic manipulation, CRC.

John Joseph Uicker, J.J., G. R. Pennock, G.R., and Shigley, J.E., 2016, Theory of Machines and Mechanisms. 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press.