Practical and experiment robotics

Practical

AND

Experimental

Robotics

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CRC Press is an imprint of the

Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Boca Raton London New York

Ferat Sahin

Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, USA

Pushkin Kachroo

Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, USA

Practical

AND

Experimental

Robotics

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CRC Press

Taylor & Francis Group

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Library of Congress Cataloging‑in‑Publication Data

Sahin, Ferat.

Practical and experimental robotics / Ferat Sahin and Pushkin Kachroo.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN‑13: 978‑1‑4200‑5909‑0 (hardcover : alk. paper)

ISBN‑10: 1‑4200‑5909‑2 (hardcover : alk. paper)

1. Robotics. I. Kachroo, Pushkin. II. Title.

TJ211.S33 2007

629.8’92‑‑dc22 2007014718

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To the joy of books and learning

iv

For our parents

Aslan Sahin and Zehra Sahin

&

Dr. P. L. Kachroo and Sadhna Kachroo

vi

Acknowledgments

I have benefited enormously from the love, support, and editorial advice of

my family and friends in the course of writing the book. Particularly, I am

thankful to my wife, Selhan Garip Sahin, for her editorial help, suggestions,

and limitless patience. I am thankful to my co-author, Pushkin Kachroo, for

his encouragement and perseverance in publishing this book. The critical re￾views of Dr. Wayne Walter and Dr. Mo Jamshidi were tremendously helpful

in shaping the technical content of the book. I am also thankful to my stu￾dents Dr. Ajay Pasupuleti, Archana Devasia, Nathan Pendleton, and Joshua

Karpoff for their help in various chapters.

Dr. Ferat Sahin

viii

About the Authors

Ferat Sahin received his B.Sc. in Electronics and Communications Engineer￾ing from Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, in 1992 and M.Sc. and Ph.D.

degrees from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in 1997 and

2000, respectively. In September 2000, he joined Rochester Institute of Tech￾nology, where he is an Associate Professor. He is also the director of Multi

Agent Bio-Robotics Laboratory at RIT. He is currently on sabbatical at the

University of Texas San Antonio. His current research interests are System of

Systems, Robotics, MEMS Materials Modeling, Distributed Computing, and

Structural Bayesian Network Learning. He has about seventy publications in￾cluding journals. He is a member of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics

Society, Robotics and Automation Society, and Computational Intelligence

Society. Locally, he has served as Secretary (2003), section Vice-chair (2004

and 2005) in the IEEE Rochester Section, and the faculty adviser for IEEE

Student Chapter at RIT in 2001 and 2002. He has served as the Student

Activities chair (2001 - 2003) and the Secretary of the IEEE SMC society

since 2003. He has received an “Outstanding Contribution Award” for his

service as the SMC Society Secretary. He was the publications Co-Chair for

the IEEE International Conference on System of Systems Engineering (SOSE

2007). He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Systems Journal and the Deputy Ed￾itor in Chief of International Journal of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Pushkin Kachroo received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from

University of California at Berkeley in 1993, his M.S. in Mechanical Engi￾neering from Rice University in 1990, and his B.Tech. in Civil Engineering

from I.I.T Bombay in 1988. He obtained the P.E. license from the State of

Ohio in Electrical Engineering in 1995. He obtained M.S. in Mathematics

from Virginia Tech in 2004. He is currently an Associate Professor in the

Bradley Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech.

He was a research engineer in the Robotics R&D Laboratory of the Lin￾coln Electric Co. from 1992 to 1994, after which he was a research scientist

at the Center for Transportation Research at Virginia Tech for about three

years. He has written four books (Feedback Control Theory for Dynamic

Traffic Assignment, Springer-Verlag, 1999, Incident Management in Intelli￾gent Transportation Systems, Artech House, 1999, Feedback Control Theory

for Ramp Metering in Intelligent Transportation Systems, Kluwer, 2003, Mo￾bile Robotics Car Design, McGraw Hill, (August 2004)), three edited volumes,

and overall more than eighty publications including journal papers. He has

been the chairman of ITS and Mobile Robotics sessions of SPIE conference

multiple times. He received the award of “The Most Outstanding New Pro￾fessor” from the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech in 2001, and Deans

Teaching Award in 2005.

x Practical and Experimental Robotics

Preface

In recent years, the robotics market has grown dramatically with the new

family of robots which are simple and easy to use. These robots can be

used/ explored by a large variety of people ranging from hobbyists to college

students. In addition, they can also be used to introduce robotics to K-12

students and increase their attention and interest in engineering and science.

The book has chapters on basic fundamentals of electrical and mechanical sys￾tems as well as some advanced topics such as forward and inverse kinematics

of an arm robot, dynamics of a mobile robot, and vision control for robots.

Each chapter starts with basic understanding of the topic covered. Later in

the chapters, the advanced topics are explored so that hobbyists and K-12

students can still assimilate the topic covered in the chapter.

The book also presents a variety of robots from arm robots to robotic

submarines most of which are available as kits in the market. In the chapters,

we first describe basic mechanical construction and electrical control of the

robot. Then, we give at least one example on how to use and operate the

robot using microcontrollers or software. We present two arm robots, a two￾wheel robot, a four wheel robot, a legged robot, flying robots, submarines, and

robotic boats. In addition, we present topics which are commonly utilized in

robotics.

The following is an overview of what can be found in each chapter, pointing

the goal of the chapters.

Fundamentals of Electronics and Mechanics

In this chapter, we present fundamentals of electrical and mechanical systems

and components. We first start with basic electrical components: Resistor,

Capacitor, and Inductor. Then, we explore semiconductor devices such as

diodes, transistors, operational amplifiers, logic components, and circuitries.

In diodes, we present different kinds of diodes mostly used in robotics such

as zener diodes, light emitting diodes (LED), photodiodes, and their appli￾cations. Then, we introduce transistor theory and transistor types mostly

used in robotics and their applications. We discuss bipolar transistors (BJT)

and field effect transistors (FET). Discussion continues on special electrical

xi

xii Practical and Experimental Robotics

components, namely operational amplifiers (OPAMPs). Most common appli￾cations of OPAMPS are also discussed. Finally, we discuss digital systems

and their basic components such as logic gates, flip-flops, registers, and some

circuitry designed with these components.

In the Mechanical systems section we discuss common mechanical compo￾nents such as gears, pulleys, chains, cams, ratchets and pawl, bearings, belt

and chain drives. These components are introduced and examples of robotics

related applications are given for each component.

Basic Stamp Microcontroller

In this chapter, we introduce a commonly used microcontroller in robotic

kits. It is called Basic Stamp Microcontroller and used in later chapters.

It is a microprocessor which can be programmed with BASIC programming

language. Basic Stamp Microcontroller has a PIC microcontroller as a core

microcontroller and related electronics. These electronics let users program

the PIC microcontroller with a BASIC programming language. We present

several Basic Stamp microcontrollers: BASIC Stamp I, BASIC Stamp II,

BASIC Stamp IIsx, BASIC Stamp IIp, and BASIC Stamp IIe. In addition

some evaluation boards used for BASIC Stamp IIe: BASIC Stamp II Carrier

Board (Rev. B), BASIC Stamp Super Carrier Board (Rev. A), Board of

Education (Rev. B), and BASIC Stamp Activity Board (Rev. C). Then, we

discuss the BASIC Stamp Editor and how to connect evaluation boards to PC

and program them. Finally, we present PBASIC programming fundamentals

and give example programs on the topics. In this discussion, we also discuss

BASIC Stamp math functionality and format. At the end of the discussion,

we present commands needed to control a Hexapod robot which has six two￾degrees-of-freedom legs.

PC Interfacing

In order to be able to program a robot for repetitive tasks or to integrate

with sensors like cameras, we need to be able to connect the robot to a con￾troller. We will use a PC as the robot controller for some robots in this book.

Therefore, we need to interface the robot with a PC. There are many ways

the robot can be connected to a PC. We can control the robot using relays by

developing a sensor board that connects to some computer port, such as the

parallel port or a USB port or a serial port. This chapter first discusses paral-