On successful completion of this course students will be able to:

 

1	Explain the basics of robotic systems;
2	Define the needs, acquire necessary information and select appropriate robots for various industrial applications;
3	Explain robot design and development processes, and their vast applications;
4	Apply the knowledge learned for the design and development of simple robotic aspects;
5	Explain the principles of and apply robot kinematics, dynamics, motion planning, trajectory generation and control;
6	Explain the basics of other robotic topics covered in the course (i.e. machine vision, mobile robot, etc);
7	Recognise the responsibility of engineers for the safety issues and the importance associated with the use of robots for various applications;
8	Demonstrate the ability to work in a team based small projects and effectively use interpersonal communication skills to produce productive solutions;

 
The above course learning outcomes are aligned with the Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competency Standard for the Professional Engineer.
The course is designed to develop the following Elements of Competency: 1.1   1.2   1.3   1.4   1.5   1.6   2.1   2.2   2.3   2.4   3.1   3.2   3.3   3.4   3.5   3.6   

• Text book: Craig, J. J., Introduction to Robotics, Mechanics and Control, 3rd Edition, Addison Wesley, 2005 (available from Unibooks)
• Lecture notes available as printed copy from the Image & Copy Centre at the beginning of the semester and electronic copy available via MyUni;

Recommended Reading:

• LOW, K.H., “Robotics, principles and systems modeling,” 2nd edition, Prentice Hall, 2004
• Schilling, R. J., Fundamentals of Robotics - Analysis & Control, Prentice Hall, 1991;
• Lewis, F. L., Abdallah, C. T., Dawson, D. M., Control of robot manipulators, Macmillan Publishing Company, 1993;
• Web sites, such as: www-sop.inria.fr/saga/personnel/merlet/merlet_eng.html.
• Other materials including journal and conference papers provided through out the semester.

Course related materials including announcements, lecture notes, tutorial materials, project information and so on will be made available in MyUni. Students are asked to access MyUni regularly (preferred at least once a week) for the course related information and materials throught out the semester. For more information, please visit MyUni Support.

• Lectures to cover the contents described in Section 1.1 course description and enhanced by videos and real life examples.
• Tutorials to support the covered contents adopting problem-solving principles.
• Assignments for students to exercise the knowledge learned.
• Small project to integrate not only the contents covered in the lectures but also to extend further beyond. Basic research skills will be briefed to students and it will require students to choose areas of interests to carry out one team based small scale project each group and write reports.

In addition to fours hours a week for lectures, tutorial and project activities in classes, averaged three hours per week are estimated to be necessary to review the contents learned and work on assignments, tutorial questions and one team based project to achieve good learning results.

Introduction to robotic systems (1 hours lecture)

• definitions for various robotic terms
• industrial robots and applications
• mobile robots and applications
• parallel robots and applications
• New development and trends of robotics

Spatial descriptions (1 hour lectures, 1 hour tutorial)

• coordinate frames
• coordinate translation and rotation
• homogeneous transformation
• compound transformation
• raw-pitch-yaw and euler angles
• inversed rotation matrix

Kinematics (3.5 hours lectures, 2 hours tutorial)

• forward kinematics
• denavit-hartenberg notation
• joint space and cartesian space
• inverse kinematics
• solvability of the inverse kinematics problems
• algebraic solution and geometric solution
• pieper’s solution
• kinemtaics of parallel robots

Jacobians (3.5 hours lectures, 1hour tutorial)

• linear and rotational velocity of rigid bodies
• motion of the links of a robot
• velocity propagation from link to link
• angular and linear velocities of robot links
• Jacobians
• singularities
• static forces propagate from link to link
• Jacobians in force domain

Dynamics (4 hours lectures, 2 hours tutorial)

• Lagrangian formulation
• Kinetic and potential energy
• Euler dynamic formulation
• the force and torque acting on a link

Trajectory generation (2 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial)

• introduction
• joint space schemes
• cartesian schemes

Position and force control (1.5 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial)

• control of manipulators
• control law partitioning
• trajectory following control
• nonlinear and varying systems
• model-based control for manipulators
• current industrial robot control systems

Wheeled mobile robots (1.5 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial)

• classification of wheels
• mobile robot locomotion
• kinematics of wheeled mobile robot
• basic control of wheeled mobile robot

Image processing and analysis (1.5 hours lectures)

• histogram, edges, and other basics
• applying filters and noise reduction
• convolution mask
• sampling and quantization
• thresholding and connectivity
• binary image
• thresholding and hough transform
• segmentation
• binary morphology operations
• image analysis
• object recognition
• stereo imaging
• change detection

Machine vision for change detection using mobile camera (1.5 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial)

• SIFT
• Issues related to illumination changes
• Issues related to mobile camera
• Change detection methods

Introduction to underwater, air and space robots (2 hours lectures, 1 hour tutorial)

• underwater robots
• aerial robots
• space robots

Robot plume tracing (1.5 hours lectures)

• insect robot and environment simulation
• plume and plume propagation
• plume tracking algorithms
• obstacle detection and avoidance

Indoor localization (1 hours lecture)

• problems of current indoor localization
• Angle-of-arrival method
• Received-signal-strength method
• Time-of-arrival method

Mobile robot trajectory generation (1.5 hours lectures)

• Vector field based method
• Time-dependent trajectory generation

Small robotic project laboratory/simulation work (10 hours project work)

In total, there are 38 hours lectures and tutorials. The number of hours for lectures; tutorial and project work are subject to vary slightly.

Not applicable.

Assessment Task	Weighting (%)	Individual/ Group	Formative/ Summative	Due (week)*	Hurdle criteria	Learning outcomes
Assignments	20	Individual	Summative	Weeks 2-12		1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Small group project	10	Group	Summative	Week 12		1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
Exam	70	Individual	Summative	Exam week		1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
Total	100

* The specific due date for each assessment task will be available on MyUni.
 
This assessment breakdown complies with the University's Assessment for Coursework Programs Policy.


Due to the current COVID-19 situation modified arrangements have been made to assessments to facilitate remote learning and teaching. Assessment details provided here reflect recent updates.

There are 4 quiz and 4 assignments for this course. All are placed in MyUni under "Assignments" and released accordingly for you to access, to work on, and to submit on-line for all students locally as well as remotely. Each quiz and assignment will be released when the designed topics are covered by the respective lecture(s) and tutorial(s). You shall have two weeks time before submission is due.

In terms of final examination, if there is to be any change, this page will be updated to provide relevant information.

Continuous assessment is required which needs the students to pass the assignments (averaged) and project to sit for the final examination.

• Assignments: Assignments will be set and related to the topics described in Section 4.3 learning activity summary.
• Project: Some small scale contemporary robotic projects will be given to students to choose from.
• Final exam: The final exam will be set to test the robotic knowledge learned.

Assignments and project report (hardcopy) need to be submitted with cover sheet to the submission box, which has the correct course label, located on level 2 of Engineering South building before the deadline. Students are required to use TURNITIN and attached the report to their project reports. Electronic copy of project report as well as programs developed for the project also need to be submitted to the email address that will be specified at the beginning of the semester. Every one day late submission (both assignments and project report) will incur 10% mark deduction. Due dates may be extended with genuine reasons which needs to communicate with the lecturer face-to-face or by emails. The turn-around timeline on assessments and the provision of feedback is two weeks after the submission deadline.