Synopsis
Recently, research in robot kinematics has attracted researchers with different theoretical profiles and backgrounds, such as mechanical and electrica! engineering, computer science, and mathematics. It includes topics and problems that are typical for this area and cannot easily be met elsewhere. As a result, a specialised scientific community has developed concentrating its interest in a broad class of problems in this area and representing a conglomeration of disciplines including mechanics, theory of systems, algebra, and others. Usually, kinematics is referred to as the branch of mechanics which treats motion of a body without regard to the forces and moments that cause it. In robotics, kinematics studies the motion of robots for programming, control and design purposes. It deals with the spatial positions, orientations, velocities and accelerations of the robotic mechanisms and objects to be manipulated in a robot workspace. The objective is to find the most effective mathematical forms for mapping between various types of coordinate systems, methods to minimise the numerical complexity of algorithms for real-time control schemes, and to discover and visualise analytical tools for understanding and evaluation of motion properties ofvarious mechanisms used in a robotic system.
Synopsis
This text presents recent advances in robot kinematics and computational geometry in kinematics. More than 50 contributions report the effective mathematical forms for mapping between various types of co-ordinate systems, methods to minimize the numerical complexity of algorithms for real-time control schemes, and analytical tools for understanding and evaluating motion properties of various mechanisms used in a robotic system. The book is divided into 12 sections, identified as the prevalent areas of contemporary research in kinematics and computational geometry as applied to robots and mechanisms. They include the following topics: workspace and trajectory analysis, computational geometry in kinematics, kinematic errors and calibration, kinematics of mobile robots, kinematic performance, kinematics in control, force and elasticity analysis, inverse kinematics, kinematic design, kinematic analysis, parallel manipulators, as well as task and motion planning. The book should be of interest to researchers, graduate students, mathematicians and engineers specializing in kinematics of robots and mechanisms in the area of mathematical modelling, design, control, and simulation.
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