"The coverage is unparalleled in both depth and breadth. No other text that I have seen offers a better complete overview of modern robotic manipulation and robot control."
-- Bradley Bishop, United States Naval Academy
Based on the highly successful classic, Robot Dynamics and Control, by Spong and Vidyasagar (Wiley, 1989), Robot Modeling and Control offers a thoroughly up-to-date, self-contained introduction to the field. The text presents basic and advanced material in a style that is at once readable and mathematically rigorous.
Key Features
* A step-by-step computational approach helps you derive and compute the forward kinematics, inverse kinematics, and Jacobians for the most common robot designs.
* Detailed coverage of vision and visual servo control enables you to program robots to manipulate objects sensed by cameras.
* An entire chapter on dynamics prepares you to compute the dynamics of the most common manipulator designs.
* The most common motion planning and trajectory generation algorithms are presented in an elementary style.
* The comprehensive treatment of motion and force control includes both basic and advanced methods.
* The text's treatment of geometric nonlinear control is more readable than in more advanced texts.
* Many worked examples and an extensive list of problems illustrate all aspects of the theory.
About the authors
Mark W. Spong is Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Spong is the 2005 President of the IEEE Control Systems Society and past Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology.
Seth Hutchinson is currently a Professor at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and a senior editor of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation. He has published extensively on the topics of robotics and computer vision.
Mathukumalli Vidyasagar is currently Executive Vice President in charge of Advanced Technology at Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's largest IT firm. Dr. Vidyasagar was formerly the director of the Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Robotics (CAIR), under Government of India's Ministry of Defense.

Highlighting the control of networked robotic systems, this book synthesizes a unified passivity-based approach to an emerging cross-disciplinary subject. Thanks to this unified approach, readers can access various state-of-the-art research fields by studying only the background foundations associated with passivity. In addition to the theoretical results and techniques, the authors provide experimental case studies on testbeds of robotic systems including networked haptic devices, visual robotic systems, robotic network systems and visual sensor network systems. The text begins with an introduction to passivity and passivity-based control together with the other foundations needed in this book. The main body of the book consists of three parts. The first examines how passivity can be utilized for bilateral teleoperation and demonstrates the inherent robustness of the passivity-based controller against communication delays. The second part emphasizes passivity's usefulness for visual feedback control and estimation. Convergence is rigorously proved even when other passive components are interconnected. The passivity approach is also differentiated from other methodologies. The third part presents the unified passivity-based control-design methodology for multi-agent systems. This scheme is shown to be either immediately applicable or easily extendable to the solution of various motion coordination problems including 3-D attitude/pose synchronization, flocking control and cooperative motion estimation. Academic researchers and practitioners working in systems and control and/or robotics will appreciate the potential of the elegant and novel approach to the control of networked robots presented here. The limited background required and the case-study work described also make the text appropriate for and, it is hoped, inspiring to students.

As the capability and utility of robots has increased dramatically with new technology, robotic systems can perform tasks that are physically dangerous for humans, repetitive in nature, or require increased accuracy, precision, and sterile conditions to radically minimize human error. The Robotics and Automation Handbook addresses the major aspects of designing, fabricating, and enabling robotic systems and their various applications. It presents kinetic and dynamic methods for analyzing robotic systems, considering factors such as force and torque. From these analyses, the book develops several controls approaches, including servo actuation, hybrid control, and trajectory planning. Design aspects include determining specifications for a robot, determining its configuration, and utilizing sensors and actuators. The featured applications focus on how the specific difficulties are overcome in the development of the robotic system. With the ability to increase human safety and precision in applications ranging from handling hazardous materials and exploring extreme environments to manufacturing and medicine, the uses for robots are growing steadily. The Robotics and Automation Handbook provides a solid foundation for engineers and scientists interested in designing, fabricating, or utilizing robotic systems.

This monograph describes the Reaction Wheel Pendulum, the newest inverted-pendulum-like device for control education and research. We discuss the history and background of the reaction wheel pendulum and other similar experimental devices. We develop mathematical models of the reaction wheel pendulum in depth, including linear and nonlinear models, and models of the sensors and actuators that are used for feedback control. We treat various aspects of the control problem, from linear control of themotor, to stabilization of the pendulum about an equilibrium configuration using linear control, to the nonlinear control problem of swingup control. We also discuss hybrid and switching control, which is useful for switching between the swingup and balance controllers. We also discuss important practical issues such as friction modeling and friction compensation, quantization of sensor signals, and saturation. This monograph can be used as a supplement for courses in feedback control at the undergraduate level, courses in mechatronics, or courses in linear and nonlinear state space control at the graduate level. It can also be used as a laboratory manual and as a reference for research in nonlinear control.

An essential introduction to engineering system modeling and simulation from a well-trusted source in engineering and education This new introductory-level textbook provides thirteen self-contained chapters, each covering an important topic in engineering systems modeling and simulation. The importance of such a topic cannot be overstated; modeling and simulation will only increase in importance in the future as computational resources improve and become more powerful and accessible, and as systems become more complex. This resource is a wonderful mix of practical examples, theoretical concepts, and experimental sessions that ensure a well-rounded education on the topic. The topics covered in Engineering Modeling and Simulation are timeless fundamentals that provide the necessary background for further and more advanced study of one or more of the topics. The text includes topics such as linear and nonlinear dynamical systems, continuous-time and discrete-time systems, stability theory, numerical methods for solution of ODEs, PDE models, feedback systems, optimization, regression and more. Each chapter provides an introduction to the topic to familiarize students with the core ideas before delving deeper. The numerous tools and examples help ensure students engage in active learning, acquiring a range of tools for analyzing systems and gaining experience in numerical computation and simulation systems, from an author prized for both his writing and his teaching over the course of his over-40-year career. Engineering Modeling and Simulation readers will also find: Numerous examples, tools, and programming tips to help clarify points made throughout the textbook, with end-of-chapter problems to further emphasize the material As systems become more complex, a chapter devoted to complex networks including small-world and scale-free networks - a unique advancement for textbooks within modeling and simulation A complimentary website that hosts a complete set of lecture slides, a solution manual for end-of-chapter problems, MATLAB files, and case-study exercises Engineering Modeling and Simulation is aimed at undergraduate and first-year graduate engineering students studying systems, in diverse avenues within the field: electrical, mechanical, mathematics, aerospace, bioengineering, physics, and civil and environmental engineering. It may also be of interest to those in mathematical modeling courses, as it provides in-depth material on MATLAB simulation and contains appendices with brief reviews of linear algebra, real analysis, and probability theory.

This self-contained introduction to practical robot kinematics and dynamics includes a comprehensive treatment of robot control. Provides background material on terminology and linear transformations, followed by coverage of kinematics and inverse kinematics, dynamics, manipulator control, robust control, force control, use of feedback in nonlinear systems, and adaptive control. Each topic is supported by examples of specific applications. Derivations and proofs are included in many cases. Includes many worked examples, examples illustrating all aspects of the theory, and problems.