William Lehman is President of Bill's Robotic Solutions which he started in July of 2013. He has had over twenty years of experience in software and hardware development. He has worked on numerous projects in digital communication systems, robotics, and aerospace applications. Mr. Lehman received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from Catholic University of America. Introducing Kinematics with Robot Operating System (ROS) AbstractThe study of Kinematics is essential to Robotics. A robot, to perform most applications needs to process positional data and transform data from one frame of reference to another. Robots have sensors, links and actuators each with its own frame of reference, so transformations between reference frames can be quite tedious. Traditionally Kinematics for robots is introduced to students with MatLab and the Robotic Toolbox. In this paper we examine the introduction of Kinematics for robotics with the features and tools available in the open source Robot Operating System (ROS). ROS implements tools for Kinematics transforms (tf) as a key part of the ROS Core Libraries. ROS defines robots with the Unified Robot Description Format (URDF) standard based upon Extensible Markup Language (XML). URDF is in many respects similar to DenavitHartenberg (D-H) Convention, but with significant additional enhancements.We choose to introduce the Electronic Engineering Technology (EET) students to Kinematics and ROS so they would have greater insight into engineering projects involving robotics. We also found that using ROS in robotics projects not only makes the projects more interesting to students but, gives students an authentic experience with distributive systems and odometry sensors. Kinematics for robots uses Linear Algebra, Matrices, Natural logarithms (Euler's equation), Imaginary numbers and Trigonometry. The areas of mathematics we used to introduce kinematics for robotics to EET students are very similar to the mathematics to understand electricity, electric fields and circuit theory. We emphasize matrix operations, operations involving Triaminic functions and imaginary numbers. This paper summarizes the result of this approach.
William Lehman is President of Bill's Robotic Solutions which he started in July of 2013. He has had over twenty years of experience in software and hardware development. He has worked on numerous projects in digital communication systems, robotics, and aerospace applications. Mr. Lehman received his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering in 1979 from Catholic University of America. LOW COST ROBOT ARMS FOR THE ROBOTIC OPERATING SYSTEM (ROS) AND MOVEITIt is not uncommon for students in high school and college to design and build low cost robot arms. This paper summarizes the results of an undergraduate assignment to design and build a low cost robot arm, as well as a robot arm controller. The robot arm controller uses accelerometers to control the motion of the robot arm. The robot arm controller can also be used to record and playback a sequence of motions for the arm. The robot arm controller was Arduino Uno Micro-controller based to keep costs down. A serial interface was also implemented for the arm controller so the arm could be controlled from a PC. The students had a mentor from industry to guide them in the design of their robot arm and controller. The mentor also evaluated the robot arm and similar designs for use with the Robotic Operating System (ROS) and Moveit software, for possible use of Moveit on future student projects.ROS and Moveit bring interesting functions for control of robot arms. The Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL) is used by the Moveit, providing a variety of motion planning algorithms to control the students arm. A 3D Camera can be directly used by Moveit to provide obstacle avoidance functions for the robot arm. The results of the evaluation of Moveit were shown to the students in a video as well as the other results of the evaluation giving them insight into how an embedded sub-system they developed can interact as part of a complex system.
Electric Circuit Analysis I is the first course that the students take in Electrical Engineering Technology and the dropout rate is high in this course because students lose interest in just solving problems and analyzing them using simulation software packages. The predesigned software packages are not helpful in understanding the calculation and analysis of electrical circuit components. This paper will discuss Electrical Circuit Analysis in MATLAB and Simulink. Electrical Circuit analysis activity demands an interdisciplinary approach which promotes collaborative project-based learning (PBL). During the undergraduate summer research training program the students were given the task to solve problems in Electric Circuit I course. However, the students working on this had the Electric Circuit I course during the academic year. These students were selected as tutors for the students taking the Electric Circuit I course in the fall semester to help them understand the concept of Electric Circuit I problem solving using MATLAB. It was observed that with implementing the problems in MATLAB the students were gaining a better understanding of Electric Circuit problems and their interest level was also increased which resulted in better retention in the course. The name MATLAB stands for MATrix LABoratory. MATLAB was written originally to provide easy access to matrix software developed by the LINPACK (linear system package) and EISPACK (Eigen system package) projects. MATLAB is computational in nature which provides conceptual approach for designing and solving problems in Electrical Circuits. MATLAB has embedded software called SIMULINK which provides an essential way to model, simulate and analyze Electrical Systems which are characterized by some inputs and outputs. This paper will discuss the summer undergraduate research training project in which the students tested the basic electrical circuits to explore Basic DC/AC circuit computations. The students were also introduced to design/implementation, testing and verification. Students not only worked with other students taking the Electric Circuit I course on campus during fall semester but also worked with the area high school students during the summer programs conducted for creating interest in Electrical Engineering Technology programs.
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