01 Introduction to Robotics

Dr.-Ing. Sudchai Boonto, Assistant Professor

January 22, 2020
Department of Control System and Instrument Engineering, KMUTT
Industrial Robotics
Industrial Robot

Figure 1: Yearly installations of industrial robots worldwide

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Industrial Robot

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Industrial Robot

Figure 2: Thailand is on the top 15.

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Industrial Robot

Figure 3: Robots are in everywhere

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Common Types of Industrial Robots:

• Articulated - This robot design features rotary joints and can range from simple
two joint structures to 10 or more joints. The arm is connected to the base with
a twisting joint. The links in the arm are connected by rotary joints. Each joint is
called an axis and provides an additional degree of freedom, or range of
motion. Industrial robots commonly have four or six axes.

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Common Types of Industrial Robots:

• Cartesian - These are also called rectilinear or gantry robots. Cartesian robots
have three linear joints that use the Cartesian coordinate system (X, Y, and Z).
They also may have an attached wrist to allow for rotational movement. The
three prismatic joints deliver a linear motion along the axis.

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Common Types of Industrial Robots:

• Cylindrical - The robot has at least one rotary joint at the base and at least one
prismatic joint to connect the links. The rotary joint uses a rotational motion
along the joint axis, while the prismatic joint moves in a linear motion.
Cylindrical robots operate within a cylindrical-shaped work envelope.

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Common Types of Industrial Robots:

• Polar - Also called spherical robots, in this configuration the arm is connected
to the base with a twisting joint and a combination of two rotary joints and one
linear joint. The axes form a polar coordinate system and create a
spherical-shaped work envelope.

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Common Types of Industrial Robots:

• SCARA - Commonly used in assembly applications, this selectively compliant

arm for robotic assembly is primarily cylindrical in design. It features two
parallel joints that provide compliance in one selected plane.

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Common Types of Industrial Robots:

• Delta - These spider-like robots are built from jointed parallelograms connected
to a common base. The parallelograms move a single EOAT in a dome-shaped
work area. Heavily used in the food, pharmaceutical, and electronic industries,
this robot configuration is capable of delicate, precise movement.

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Modern Industrial Robot

A collaborative robot (cobot) attaches to a mobile robot. The robot can work as a
human for a complicated job. It can move everywhere in the production line. Not only
in industry but we can use this kind of robots in healthcare house and smart farm.
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Configuration Space
Typical robotic manipulator system component

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Typical robotic manipulator system component

• A robot is mechanically constructed by connecting a set of bodies, called links,

to each other using various types of joints.
• Actuators, such as electric motors, deliver forces or torques that cause the
robot’s links to move.
• An end-effector, such as a gripper or hand for grasping and manipulating
objects, is attached to a specific link.
Where is the robot? The answer is given by the robot’s configuration

(a) the angle θ is the configuration of the door. (b) the coordinated (x, y). (c) the
configuration of a coin is described by (x, y, θ), where θ defines the direction in which 13
Abraham Lincoln is looking.
Configuration Space

degrees of freedom (dof)

The number of degrees of freedom (dof) of a robot is the smallest number of
real-valued coordinates needed to represent its configuration.

Definition
Configuration The configuration of a robot is a complete specification of the position
of every point of the robot. The minimum number n of real-values coordinates
needed to represent the configuration is the number of degrees of freedom (dof) of
the robot. The n-dimensional space containing all possible configurations of the
robot is called the configuration space (C-space). The configuration of a robot is
represented by a point in its C-space.

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Degrees of Freedom of a Rigid Body

• Three points A, B, C on the plane are (xA , yA ), (xB , yB ), and (xC , yC ). If

there are no constraints, we should have 6 degree-of-freedom to select the
values of each coordinate.
• However we have three constraints:
√
d(A, B) = (xA − xB )2 + (yA − yB )2 = dAB
√
d(B, C) = (xB − xC )2 + (yB − yC )2 = dBC
√
d(A, C) = (xA − xC )2 + (yA − yC )2 = dAC 15
Degrees of Freedom of a Rigid Body

• The Point (xA , yA ) can be selected freely.

• We can select point (xB , yB ) by defining an angle ψAB freely with one
constraint, dAB .
• We can select Point (xC , yC ) from the two constraints, dAC and dBC .
• The coin has exactly three degrees of freedom in the plane, which can be
specified by (xA , yA , ψAB ).

Definition

degrees of freedom = (sum of freedoms of the points)

− (number of independent constraints)
degrees of freedom = (number of variables) − (number of independent equations)

• spatial rigid body has six degrees of freedom.

• planar rigid body has three degrees of freedom.

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Degrees of Freedom of a Robot
Robot Joints

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Robot Joints

The number of degrees of freedom f and constraints c provided by common joints.

Joint type dof f Constraints c (planar) Constraints c (spatial)

Revolute (R) 1 2 5
Prismatic (P) 1 2 5
Helical (H) 1 n/a 5
Cylindrical (C) 2 n/a 4
Universal (U) 2 n/a 4
Spherical (S) 3 n/a 3

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Grübler’s Formula

Definition
Consider a mechanism consisting of N links, where ground is also regarded as a link.
Let J be the number of joints, m be the number of degrees of freedom of a rigid body
(m = 3 for planar mechanisms and m = 6 for spatial mechanisms), fi be the number
of freedoms provided by joint i, and ci be the number of constraints provided by joint
i, where fi + ci = m for all i. Then Grübler’s formula for the number of degrees of
freedom of the robot is

∑
J
dof = m(N − 1) − ci
i=1

∑
J ∑
J
= m(N − 1) − (m − fi ) = m(N − 1 − J) + fi
i=1 i=1

This formula holds only if all joint constraints are independent. If they are not
independent then the formula provides a lwer bound on the number of degrees of
freedom.
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Grübler’s Formula

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Grübler’s Formula

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Grübler’s Formula

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Reference

1. R. N. Jazar, Theory of applied robotics: kinematics, dynamics, and control, 2nd,

Springer , 2010
2. W.W. Spong, S. Hutchinson, and M. Vidyasagar, Robot dynamics and control, 2nd,
John Wiley & Sons, 2008
3. B. Siciliano, O.Khatib, Springer Handbook of Robotics, Springer, 2008
4. P. Corke, Robotics, Vision and control: Fundamental Algorithms in MATLAB, 2nd,
Springer, 2011
5. S. B. Niku, Introduction to Robotics: Analysis, Control, Applications, 2nd, John
Wiley & Sons, 2011
6. A. J. Kurdila, and P. Ben-Tzvi, Dynamics and Control of Robotic Systems, Wiley,
2020
7. K. M. Lynch, and F. C. Park, Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control,
Cambridge U. Press, 2017
8. V. Toochinda, Industrial Robot Analysis and Control, Chulalongkorn University
Press, 2559 (in Thai)