Parts of a Robot

Fundamental Modelling

Learning Outcomes

• Define the following terms:
  • Degree of Freedom, Link, Joint
  • Robot Workspace, Taskspace
• Identify types of robotic manipulator
• Classify links and joints of a given manipulator

TODO: Types of Robotic Manipulators in previous page Just talķ about different manipulators

Introduction

Consider the case of opening and closing a door. If you view the door as a wooden slab connected to the wall, you'll notice the hinges that allow the door to pivot easily. These hinges also prevent the door from moving in any other direction.

Door schematic diagram

Instead of the door, imagine your elbow. Our elbow joint allows us to move along one direction, similar to the door. If you consider the door and wall -- or the bones of our arm -- as rigid bodies connected at a central pivot, this results in a limited motion that is more generally termed degree of freedom.

Degrees of Freedom: definition

Links: definition

Joints: definition

Now let's look at a more complex case. Our arm, including the hand, consists of many degrees of freedom -- our arm itself has 7 degrees of freedom (find out how!), and our hand, fingers included, has close to 22! This allows us to grab, push, pull, twist and perform other actions to interact with objects in our environment. This is possible due to different types of joints that allow for different degrees of freedom.

Hand example

Types of Joints

TODO: Add table, Dofs, etc.

Exercise

Identify mechanism Identify types of links and joints

Revisiting Types of Robotic Manipulators

Looking back at the different types of manipulators we saw in the previous lesson, we can now look at them through the lens of the different terms we've learnt so far.