ROBOTICS AND

AUTOMATION
ME-465
Dr. Sara Ali
 Administrative
2

• Brief Introduction
• At least 75% attendance policy will be
enforced.
• Office Location: 2nd floor, Room 317
• Office Hours: email at sarababer
@smme.nust.edu.pk

01/24/2025
 Textbooks
3

 Introduction to Robotics by John J. Craig,

3rd Edition.
 Robotics, Vision and Control by Peter
Corke, 2nd Edition.

Dr Hasan Sajid Engineering Mechanics 01/24/2025

Pre-requisites
 Linear Algebra
 Probability
 Dynamics
 Basic Control theory
 Programming in MATLAB and object-
oriented concepts
Essential Logistics
 At-least MATLAB 2015 and preferably
MATLAB 2016b.
 Download and install Robotics Toolbox
(RT) by Peter Corke available at:
http://petercorke.com/wordpress/toolbox
es/robotics-toolbox#Downloading_the_To
olbox
 Manual of RT can be downloaded at:
http://petercorke.com/wordpress/?ddown
load=343
Course Content
 Representing Position and Orientation
 Time and Motion
 Robot Arm Kinematics
 Velocity Relationships
 Dynamics and Control
Brief History
 Term coined in a 1921 Czech Science fiction
play “Rossum’s Universal Robots” by Karel
Capek.
 In Czech, the word “Robot” is derived from
the word for slave.
 First patent for what we consider a robot was
filed in 1954 by George C. Dovel and issued in
1961
 First Robotics company, Unimation was
founded in 1956 by George C. Devol and
Joseph Engelberger
 Who is Who?

George C. Devol Joseph F.

2011: Inducted in national Inventors Hall of Engelberger
Fame “Father of Robotics”
Brief History
 First Industrial Robot installed in 1961

a A plan view of machine from Devol’s patent; b first

unimation robot working at a General Motors factory.
(Courtesy of George C Dovel)
Brief History

Descendants of Unimate:
First Generation robot-
subcategorized as
manufacturing robots.

What are first generation

robots?

A modern six-axis robot from

ABB for factory automation
(Image courtesy ABB robotics).
Brief History

Descendants of Unimate:

Baxter, two-armed robot with

built-in vision capability (image
courtesy Rethink robotics)
 Brief History – Mobile Robots

Small autonomous underwater vehicle self driving car (image courtesy Dept. Information Honda’s Asimo humanoid robot (image courtesy Honda
(Todd Walsh © 2013 MBARI) Engineering, Oxford Univ.) Motor Co. Japan)

Mars Science Lander, Curiosity, self portrait taken at Cheetah legged robot (image courtesy Boston Savioke Relay delivery robot (image courtesy
“John Klein”. Dynamics) Savioke)
Brief History – Mobile
Robots

Global Hawk unmanned aerial

Autonomous Underwater vehicle
vehicle (photo courtesy of NASA)
Alternative Taxonomy
 Based on robots function
 Manufacturing Robots
 Function: operate in factories and are the technological
descendents of the first generation robots.
 Application: factory automation, packaging, electronic
assembly, welding, painting etc
 Service Robots:
 Function: supply services to people
 Applications: medical rehabilitation, fetching, carrying,
cleaning, personal assistance etc
 Field Robots
 Function: work on outdoor tasks
 Applications: environmental monitoring, agriculture,
mining, construction, forestry, agricultural robots,
driverless cars etc
Alternative Taxonomy Cont.
 Humanoid Robots
 have the physical form of a human being – they
are both mobile robots and service robots
 Telerobots
 are robot-like machines that are remotely
controlled by a human operator. Davinci
surgical robot, mars rover etc

Davinci Surgical System Mars Rover

(Courtesy: Intuitive Surgical) (Courtesy: NASA)
What is a Robot?
what is a Robot?
“a goal oriented machine that can sense,
plan and act” (SPA)
 A robot senses its environment and uses
that information, together with a goal, to
plan some action.
 After the acting phase, the sensing
phase, and the entire cycle, is repeated.

https://
www.youtube.com/watch?
v=tUs2nyDcls8
Key terms: Sense, plan and
act
 Sensing
 Proprioceptive sensors measure the state of the robot itself:
the angle of the joints on a robot arm, the number of wheel
revolutions on a mobile robot or the current drawn by an
electric motor.
 Exteroceptive sensors measure the state of the world with
respect to the robot. The sensor might be a simple bump sensor
on a robot vacuum cleaner to detect collision. It might be a GPS
receiver that measures distances to an orbiting satellite
constellation, or a compass that measures the direction of the
Earth’s magnetic field vector relative to the robot. It might also
be an active sensor that emits acoustic, optical or radio pulses
in order to measure the distance to points in the world based on
the time taken for a reflection to return to the sensor.
 What about cameras?
 Ethical Issues

“robots taking jobs from

people”
“whom to blame if a robotic car
crashes into a human or gets into an
accident”
“human vs robotic
surgery”
“Should we use robots to look
after our children, and even teach
Representing Position and Orientation

 Pose: Combination of position and

orientation
 a point in space?
 Coordinate frame/ Cartesian coordinate
system?
 Difference/advantage of point or vector?
Think about real world objects …….
Difference between a point and a
vector
• a vector is a movement that you can make. like “2 steps north, 3 steps
east”
• a point is a position. it’s a place in the room. like “the south east corner”
or “the center”
 Notice that a vector doesn’t say where you start or end. Just how you
should move.
 Some operations mix the two. You can take a point and add a vector (start
in the center of the room, go 2 steps north and 3 steps east). You can take
two points and talk about the vector between them (how do you need to
talk to get between the points).
Vector and Point
 Vectors don't normally represent a position, rather they represent a
direction and magnitude.
 So if you subtract a point from another point, you get a vector-
subtraction gives you a displacement vector
 If you add a point and a vector, you get another point.
 A point is just a vector with a known origin.
 You can add 2 vectors and get a vector – resultant vector
 Vectors are normally represented with <> and points are represented
by ().

https://graphics.cs.wisc.edu/WP/cs559-fall2014/2014/08/28/points-
vectors-and-coordinate-systems-why-are-points-and-vectors-different/
Representing Position and Orientation

 Convention: Attach coordinate frame to

an object. It enables us to describe the
pose (position and orientation) of an
object with respect to reference
coordinate frame. Each frame is given a
name.
 Assumption: object is rigid
 Representing Position and Orientation

 How many dimensions are required to

completely describe the pose of an
object?
 Notations

Frame
being described
Reference
coordinate
frame

Relative pose of frame {B} with respect to

frame {A}
NOTE: If superscript is missing, we assume the
change is w.r.t world coordinate frame denoted
Representing Position and Orientation

Point P can be described w.r.t either frame {A} or {B} by

vectors Ap and Bp respectively. Formally

The operator . transforms the vector resulting in a new

vector BUT w.r.t another coordinate frame
Representing Position and Orientation

 An important characteristic of relative

poses is that they can be
combined/composed together

*Pose of {C} relative to {A} can be

obtained by compounding the
relative poses from {A} to {B} and
{B} to {C}. We use the operator ⊕
to indicate Composition of relative
poses.
 Representing Position and Orientation

 An important characteristic of relative

poses is that they can be
combined/composed together

For this case the point P can be

described by

Till now we have seen 2D coordinate frames. It is applicable to many

robotic systems especially mobile robots that operate in planar world.
However for many other robots, we require 3D coordinate frames.
Representing Position and Orientation

Spatial Relationships
Representing Position and Orientation

 Algebraic Rules

combination

Not commutative with

exception of their sum being
zero
Working in 2D

Describe
frame {B}
with respect to
frame {A}
 Working in 2D – Orthonormal rotation
matrix
We introduce another frame {V} whose
axis are parallel to frame {A} but origin lies
on frame {B}. Point P can be expressed in
terms of frame {V} as:

Eq
1
Frame {B} can be described
using its orthogonal axes as:

We can represent point P wrt

frame {B} as
Eq
2
 Working in 2D – Orthonormal rotation
matrix

Equate equations 1 and 2, to see how

points are transformed when frame is
rotated.

Rotation Matrix:
transforms a point P from
one frame to the other. It is
denoted by VRB
Working in 2D – Orthonormal rotation
matrix
 Properties of rotation matrix
Rotation Matrix in Toolbox

R=rot2(0.2)

Symbolic
Mathematics
syms theta
R=rot2(theta)
Homogeneous Form of a
Vector
Working in 2D – Homogeneous
Transformation Matrix

 Translation?
 It is simply vector addition
Working in 2D – Homogeneous
Transformation Matrix

 Coordinate vectors of point P can be

expressed in homogeneous form (note
that tilde indicates a homogeneous
vector) as

A
TB represents the translation and orientation or
relative pose and often referred as rigid-body
motion.
Working in 2D – Homogeneous
Transformation Matrix

Transformation matrices can be compounded/combined as

Dot here is standard matrix-vector

product
Transformation in Toolbox

T1=transl2(1,2)*trot2(30,'deg') *Note that rot2 provides

plotvol([0 5 0 5]); orthonormal rotation matrix,
trplot2(T1, 'frame', '1', 'color', 'b') whereas trot2 provides
homogeneous transformation
T2 = transl2(2, 1)
trplot2(T2, 'frame', '2', 'color', 'r');

T3 = T1*T2
trplot2(T3, 'frame', '3', 'color', 'g');

T4 = T2*T1;
trplot2(T4, 'frame', '4', 'color', 'c');

P = [3 ; 2 ];
plot_point(P, 'label', 'P', 'solid', 'ko');
Transformation in Toolbox
 To determine the coordinate of the point
P wrt {1}
Earlier we derived
……

P1 = inv(T1) * [P; 1]

Conversions from homogeneous to

Euclidean space
h2e( inv(T1) * e2h(P) )