Introduction to Open-Source Robotics

Presentation

The objective of this course is to equip the reader with the scientific and technical knowledge to develop advanced applications in industrial robotics. The main features of this course are:

1. Because robotics implies by essence the development of robotic systems, every theoretical notion we introduce will be accompanied by practical software examples and exercises. Our objective is that, by the end of this course, the reader will be able to use and/or develop advanced real-world robotics applications.

2. Conversely, we only introduce the theoretical notions that are useful for industrial applications and relevant with regards to the intended open-source software. As a consequence, on many occasions, we shall refer the interested reader to appropriate articles or textbooks for a more complete coverage.

3. This course is completely free, and so is all the required software, as we shall use only (state-of-the-art) open-source software, such as ROS, OpenRAVE, OpenCV, PCL, etc. Hardware is emulated through Gazebo, an open-source, high-quality, physics simulator, such that there is no need to purchase any hardware.

Overview

Examples of real-world robotics applications, developed in our research group, can be seen in this video:

Now, let us consider the following task: "pick up an object from a tabletop and place it at another place".

This task can be broken down into the following steps:

1. Determine the position of the object relative to the robot;
2. Move the robot gripper towards the object, without colliding with the environment;
3. Grasp the object;
4. Move the grasped object towards the desired position, without colliding with the environment;
5. Release the object.

Step 1 requires a vision sensor, typically a 3D camera, and vision algorithms to find the position of the object with high enough precision. Such vision algorithms will be covered in Chapter 4 (Robot vision) of this course.

Steps 2, 3 and 4 require generating the commands that move the robot gripper to and from an appropriate position to grasp the object, without colliding with the environment. This will be covered in Chapters 2 (Manipulator kinematics) and Chapter 3 (Motion planning).

Putting together the different steps and the different hardware components (vision sensor, robot arm, gripper, etc.) requires a versatile and robust software architecture, which will be covered in Chapter 5 (System).

Some industrial applications, such as assembly, drilling, riveting, etc., require to precisely control the contact force between the robot and the environment. This will be covered in Chapter 6 (Force control).

Authors

This book is continuously authored by Quang-Cuong Pham and Francisco Suárez-Ruiz. Many thanks to Huy Nguyen and Bui Xuan Hien for their contributions.

Questions, suggestions, and bug reports should be addressed to

cuong.pham@normalesup.org.