A 01 Front Matter
A 01 Front Matter
A 01 Front Matter
Part A
Robotics
Part A Robotics Foundations
1 Kinematics
Kenneth Waldron, Stanford, USA
James Schmiedeler, Columbus, USA
6 Motion Control
Wankyun Chung, Pohang, Korea
Li-Chen Fu, Taipei, Taiwan, R.O.C.
Su-Hau Hsu
2 Dynamics
Roy Featherstone, Canberra, Australia
David E. Orin, Columbus, USA
7 Force Control
Luigi Villani, Napoli, Italy
Joris De Schutter, Leuven-Heverlee, Belgium
5 Motion Planning
Lydia E. Kavraki, Houston, USA
Steven M. LaValle, Urbana, USA
The chapters contained in Part A , Robotics Foundations, present the fundamental principles and methods
that are used to develop a robotic system. In order to
perform the tasks that are envisioned for robots, many
challenging problems have been uncovered in kinematics, dynamics, design, actuation, sensing, motion
planning, control, programming, and task planning. The
chapters in this part address the basic issues in each of
these areas. Some of the basic problems in robotics are
outlined as follows. Robots often consist of a large number of degrees of freedom so that they can provide the
rich set of three-dimensional (3-D) motions that may
be required for a range of tasks. The kinematic and dynamic relationships between the joint actuators motion
and torques, and the desired motion and force for a task
can be very complex. The design of the link and joint
structures, as well as the actuation, to achieve the desired
performance is also challenging. The robot is a nonlinear, coupled system which is difficult to control because
of its complex dynamics. This is exacerbated when
the environment is unstructured, and often sophisticated
sensing and estimation techniques are required.
In addition to control of the motion, control of the
interaction forces between the robot and environment
is needed when manipulating objects or interacting with
humans. A fundamental robotics task is to plan collisionfree motion for complex bodies from a start to a goal
position among a collection of obstacles, and this can
become an intractable computational problem. In order
to achieve some of the intelligence ascribed to humans, robots need to be equipped with sophisticated
task planners that employ symbolic reasoning to move
in dynamic, partially known environments. Robot software architectures also have special needs because of
these requirements.
While the basic issues outlined in the previous paragraphs are addressed in this part, more depth can be
found in other parts of the Handbook. The kinematics,
dynamics, mechanical design, and control principles and
methods introduced in this part can be applied to robotic
structures made up of arms, hands, and legs (Part B)
as well as to manipulators (Part D), wheeled mobile
robots (Part E), and field and service robots (Part F).
Force control is especially important for manipulators
and their interfaces (Part D). The basic sensing and estimation techniques presented here are expanded and
applied to specific sensing modalities in Part C. Motion planning is an important aspect of manipulation
(Part D) and mobile and distributed robotic systems
(Part E). Robotic systems architectures and AI reasoning methods are particularly important in mobile and