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Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

hades.mech.northwestern.edu

21–27 of 27 posts

Re: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

#21
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I took a linear algebra course. Maybe I need to restudy but I would rather have links to exact chapters than reading the whole thing, as I don't see a direct path from the linear algebra I studied to the topology concepts and geometry here. Specifically there weren't any curves in linear algebra. Ex 4.10 and 4.11 here: http://planning.cs.uiuc.edu/node143.html Are examples of things that are hard for me to understand.…

You have to study quite a lot of linear algebra before you can tackle functional analysis, the subject which includes the study of topological vector spaces. I don't know anything about robotics, however, so I don't know how functional analysis would apply, if at all.

Functional analysis shows up all over the place. Everywhere you can take a Fourier transform, you can use functional analysis. For robotics, control theory and computer vision both come to mind.

Re: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

#23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Flying is one helluva lot easier than walking.

*Learn to roll before you fly!

Thanks. Sometimes I forget that people will abuse the intent of a comment to be technically correct.

Re: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

#24

The topology part of these textbooks is the hardest for me. Understanding the 2d representations of the shapes. Where can one get a more bottom up explanation of the crucial topology concepts? Also bad at geometry in general

As a start, I recommend reading about Winding Numbers. I've found that to be the most important topology concept for 2d geometry. Computational Geometry is probably deeper than you want to go, but it would answer most of your questions. For curves, I recommend a Numerical Methods reference. Honestly, wander around Wikipedia links starting from topics like winding numbers and spatial partitioning, and you'll probably…

The topology in planning usually deals with higher dimensional geometry. Does the same answer still apply?

Re: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

#25

Whilst this is interesting, this isn't where the field is going. This is useful if, say, you want to make a CNC robot with extreme rigidity. Replacing forward and inverse kinematics with machine learning is extremely simple, and avoids most of the problems these formulas have (for instance, they don't consider that a robot might attempt to move through itself). And while grasping and manipulation isn't simple even wi…

> Replacing forward and inverse kinematics with machine learning is extremely simple

Could you point towards a good paper or review paper on using machine learning models to learn forward and inverse kinematics? How far can one get with plain old LSTMs?

Re: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

#26

Are robotics courses these days not covering flight-related topics? It seems like they should, given the state of drone/uav technology.

To add to the pile, EdX also has a course from TUM: https://www.edx.org/course/autonomous-navigation-flying-robo...

Re: Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Free Textbook (2017)

#27

Thanks. I will highly recommend reading this textbook along with RM Murray's "A Mathematical Introduction to Robotic Manipulation" [1]. Both of these textbooks provide very intuitive and clear cut explaination of principles behing robotic motion and planning. I would also highly recommend completing a 5-course specialization on Coursera [2] by the same name as the first textbook. The course is conducted by the author…

After quickly scanning the summary and first chapters, it looks pretty similar to MLS94, perhaps a little more approachable.
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