Introduction to Robotics
What robots are, how they sense, think and act, how they move and are controlled and programmed, where they are used, and the safety standards (ANSI/A3 R15.06, OSHA, FAA drone rules), ethics and careers that come with them.
ROB-100 Year 1 3 credits 12 lessons · 5 h 17 min
Offered by HSM University · Robotics
This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.
What you'll learn
- Define a robot, explain the sense, think and act loop and classify robots by application, mobility, form and autonomy
- Trace the history of robotics from automata and feedback control to industrial, mobile, space and collaborative robots
- Identify a robot's subsystems, count degrees of freedom and estimate battery runtime from energy and average power
- Describe positions, orientations and poses in coordinate frames and transform points between frames in two dimensions
- Compare robot sensors by range, resolution, accuracy and failure modes and calculate odometry and sensor ranges
- Explain how wheeled, legged, arm, flying and underwater robots move and calculate wheel speeds, gear ratios and thrust
- Explain open-loop and closed-loop control, trace a proportional controller and describe PID tuning and autonomy levels
- Describe layered robot software architectures, ROS 2 communication, state machines, behavior trees and testing
- Summarize where robots are used, interpret robot installation and density statistics and calculate payback and ROI
- Apply risk assessment, the hierarchy of controls and Canadian or US robot and drone rules, and discuss ethical questions
- Describe robotics careers, education and licensing pathways, required skills and labor-market data
- Plan, build, test and document a simple robot and write a design brief for a robot application
Course content
12 lessons · 5 h 17 min total · final exam
- 1 What makes a machine a robot 25 min · quiz
- 2 A short history of robotics 26 min · quiz
- 3 Robot anatomy: bodies, sensors, actuators and computers 28 min · quiz
- 4 Describing position and motion 28 min · quiz
- 5 How robots sense the world 27 min · quiz
- 6 How robots move: wheels, legs, arms and wings 29 min · quiz
- 7 Control: from feedback loops to autonomy 25 min · quiz
- 8 Robot software and the sense-plan-act loop 27 min · quiz
- 9 Robots in industry, health, homes and the field 24 min · quiz
- 10 Safety, ethics and robots at work 25 min · quiz
- 11 Careers in robotics 25 min · quiz
- 12 Building your first robot project 28 min · quiz
- E Final exam 20 questions
Description
What robots are, how they sense, think and act, how they move and are controlled and programmed, where they are used, and the safety standards (ANSI/A3 R15.06, OSHA, FAA drone rules), ethics and careers that come with them.
Part of the Science stream, typically taken in year 1.