Biomimetic Robotics

This book is written as an initial course in robotics. It is ideal for study of unmanned aerial or underwater vehicles, a topic on which few books exist. It presents the fundamentals of robotics, from an aerospace perspective, by considering only the field of robot mechanisms. For an aerospace engineer, three dimensional and parallel mechanisms – flight simulation, unmanned aerial vehicles, and space robotics – take on an added significance. Biomimetic robot mechanisms are fundamental to manipulators, walking, mobile, and flying robots. As a distinguishing feature, this book gives a unified and integrated treatment of biomimetic robot mechanisms. It is ideal preparation for the next robotics module: practical robot control design. While the book focuses on principles, computational procedures are also given due importance. Students are encouraged to use computational tools to solve the examples in the exercises. The author has included some additional topics for the enthusiastic reader to explore.

Spis treści:
1. The robot
2. Biomimetic mechanisms
3. Homogeneous transformations and screw motions
4. Direct kinematics of serial robot manipulators
5. Manipulators with multiple postures and compositions
6. Grasping, mechanics and constraints
7. Jacobians
8. Newtonian, Eulerian and Lagrangian dynamics
9. Path planning, obstacle avoidance and navigation
10. Hamiltonian systems and feedback linearization
11. Robot control
12. Biomimetic motive propulsion
Answers to selected exercises
Appendix, attitude and quaternions.