Robotics

Machines that sense, decide and move. The mechanical engineering of robots. Learn forward and inverse kinematics, robot dynamics and torque sizing, actuators and drives, sensors and feedback, trajectory planning and motion control, and how industrial robots are selected, programmed and deployed safely.

• Robot Kinematics — Kinematics maps joint angles to where the robot's tool is — and back. Learn joints and degrees of freedom, coordinate frames and homogeneous transforms, Denavit–Hartenberg parameters, forward and inverse kinematics, workspace, Jacobians and singularities.
• Dynamics — Robot dynamics relates joint torques to motion. Learn gravity, inertia, Coriolis and centrifugal terms, the manipulator equation, Lagrange and Newton–Euler methods, payload effects, and how to size joint torques for a duty cycle.
• Actuators — Actuators make robots move. Learn electric motors (servo, stepper, BLDC), gear reducers (planetary, harmonic, cycloidal), hydraulic and pneumatic actuators, sizing torque/speed/inertia ratio, and emerging soft and series-elastic actuators.
• Sensors — Robots need to sense themselves and their world. Learn encoders and resolvers, force/torque sensors, IMUs, proximity and vision sensors, LiDAR and time-of-flight, resolution vs accuracy, and sensor fusion.
• Motion Control — Motion control makes robots follow planned paths accurately. Learn trajectory planning (trapezoidal and S-curve profiles), cascaded position/velocity/current loops, PID tuning, feedforward, following error, bandwidth and multi-axis coordination.
• Industrial Robots — Industrial robots automate welding, handling, painting and assembly. Learn robot types and specifications (payload, reach, repeatability), programming methods (teach pendant, offline), cell design, safety standards, collaborative robots and ROI.