Modern Robotics, Course 6: Capstone Project, Mobile Manipulation

The capstone project of the Modern Robotics specialization is on mobile manipulation: simultaneously controlling the motion of a wheeled mobile base and its robot arm to achieve a manipulation task. This project integrates several topics from the specialization, including trajectory planning, odometry for mobile robots, and feedback control. Beginning from the Modern Robotics software library provided to you (written in Python, Mathematica, and MATLAB), and software you have written for previous courses, you will develop software to plan and control the motion of a mobile manipulator to perform a pick and place task. You will test your software on the KUKA youBot, a mobile manipulator consisting of an omnidirectional mecanum-wheel mobile base, a 5-joint robot arm, and a gripper. The state-of-the-art, cross-platform V-REP robot simulator will be used to simulate the task.

• Introduction to the Capstone Project, and Milestone 1
• Odometry for wheeled mobile robots and its use in a kinematic simulator for the youBot omnidirectional mobile robot with four mecanum wheels.
• Milestone 2: Reference Trajectory Generation
• Generating a reference trajectory in SE(3) for the end-effector of a mobile manipulator to achieve a pick-and-place task.
• Milestone 3: Feedforward Control
• Feedforward control of the end-effector of a mobile manipulator to drive the end-effector along a reference trajectory.
• Completing the Project and Your Submission
• Feedforward-plus-feedback control of the end-effector of a mobile manipulator to stabilize a reference trajectory for the end-effector.