Robotics & Automation Course Project

To be submitted in : Tuesday. 30/12/2014

The project presentation : Wed. 31/12/2014

For this project, students will work together in teams of three to design (simulate) a
robotic manipulator arm adapted to operate in a particular, specialized environment.

System Design & Implementation:

3D Modeling & Graphical User Interface (15):
Spatial representation of the manipulator, 3D graphical rendering of the robot,
(drawing robot primitives) & creating a virtual robot simulation and control
environment in Matlab (toolboxes: Symbolic, VR, Robotics, SimMechanics, etc.) or
using OpenGL under VC++ or other software.
You must justify your selection if you use another tool.

You will animate a robot move and manipulate the robot primitives using the
transformation operations (rotation and translation), you should incorporate the
following:

Basic Requirements (45):

Forward Kinematics (15):
Implement the DH convention to find the EE position & orientation given the joints
variables.

Inverse Kinematics (15):

With the inverse kinematics for a manipulator solved, you can use the equations to
find the inputs (joint angles) necessary to plot your robot. You can define as input the
desired EE position and orientation, and then animate your robot the reach this target
position.

Velocity Kinematics (5):

Derive and implement the manipulator Jacobian (consider the singular
configurations).

Path & Trajectory generation (5):

A nice feature you can add to your program would plot the path of end effector over a
given move.
If you plot the current tool position, you can generate the trajectory curve in real time.
You can define a trajectory in terms of a tool space move, say a straight-line move of
the EE, and then animate your robot over this move.
You can simulate a task like (spot welding –spray painting - material handling,
assembly task, …)

Advanced Requirements/topics (5):

Simulation of sensors, collision detection and obstacles avoidance,
Control (PID, feedfoward, fuzzy, …)
…

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Documentation (Soft/CD and Hard copy) (20):
A report contains a detailed description of your project: introduction, theory,
implementation, conclusion and perspectives.
User Manual, Source Code, and any other appropriate documentation.
The report has an absolute maximum upper limit of 20 pages in a reasonable sized
font (12, times roman, single space).

Demonstration (15):
Presentation (Slides ppt) (15 min) + live demo. (2 min) + Questions (3 min)

Evaluation Method:
1. Functionality (50) (FK, IK, VK, Traj. Planning, ….)
2. 3D Modeling and, How much the interface is user friendly (15)
3. Report and Documentation (20)
4. Presentation and Questions (15)

Teams:
There will be 10-11 projects (groups of 3 students)

Examples:
Cylindrical arm with spherical Wrist
Spherical arm with spherical Wrist
Cartesian arm with spherical Wrist
Stanford Manipulator
Robot arm with 4 fingers
Non-serial chain manipulator (analyze the kinematics or dynamics)
Walking robot
Hopping Robot
Car-like Mobile robot
Any other suggestion must be approved by the instructor.

Some figures

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