Robotics: Kinematics and Mathematical Foundations

Welcome to the first course in the Robotics MicroMasters series. This is an advanced course designed for learners who have a bachelor's degree in engineering or a similar field.

Learners will succeed in this course if they have familiarity with basic operations on matrices and vectors, as well as exposure to derivatives and partial derivatives.

The fundamental challenge this course addresses is how one can create robots that operate well in the real world.

Math Fundamentals
Week 1: Vector spaces, inner products, vector norms, orthogonality
Week 2: Linear transformations, matrix multiplication, matrix groups
Week 3: Coordinate transformations, rigid transformations, rotation matrices quaternions, Matrix groups SE(2) and SE(3)
Week 4: Project

Robot Kinematics
Week 5: Kinematic chains, forward kinematics,
Week 6: Inverse kinematics
Week 7: Parallel mechanisms
Week 8: Project

_ Kinematic Path Planning _
Week 9: Graph based methods, Dijkstra’s method, A*Star
Week 10: RRT, configuration space
Week 11: Artificial potential fields
Week 12: Project