Let me introduce myself, I am Dr. D. K. Pratihar
professor of mechanical engineering department,
IIT Kharagpur. I welcome you all to this course
on robotics. Now to introduce me let me mention
that I started learning robotics in the year
1995 during my PhD study at IIT Kanpur. I
worked on 6 legged robot up to the completion
of my PhD, I went for 2 post doctor studies.
The first one was in QC institute of design
Fukuoka, Japan and the second post doctor
study was at Darmstadt University of Technology
Germany, under the Alexander Von Humboldt
Fellowship Program and in both the PDS I worked
on robotics. So I have almost 22 years of
research experience in different areas of
robotics moreover I have been teaching robotics
both at the UG at the PG levels at IIT Kharagpur
since 2003.
Now based on these teaching and research experience
very recently I have written one text book
and this particular text book has been published
both in India and in abroad. Now this is actually
the text book which I have written on robotics
and this textbook will be the textbook for
this particular course also. Now regarding
this robotics I have guided a few PhD’s
I have completed a few sponsor projects.
Now to start with the subject let us start
with the definition of robot. Now here actually
what I do is we define robot as an automatic
machine which is reprogrammable and which
is multifunctional.
Now these robots actually to develop we copy
everything from the human being so we try
to copy the hand of a human being, the head
of a human being, heart of a human being in
the artificial way to develop the different
types of robots. Now if you see the robots
are available nowadays in different forms.
For example, say the robots are available
in the form of manipulator.
The manipulator means it is robot with fixed
base, the manipulator could be either serial
manipulator or there could be parallel manipulator.
The robots are also available with moving
base just like the wheel robots, the multi-legged
robots, the track vehicles. Now these multi-legged
robots could be eight the 2 legged robots,
4 legged robots, 6 legged robots and so on.
And nowadays the drones are very popular and
drone is also a special type of robot. Now
to study this particular robotics actually
what we will have to do is we will have to
study 4 modules in robotics. The modules are
the kinematics, dynamics, control scheme and
intelligent issues. Now this kinematics and
dynamics are coming under the umbrella of
mechanical engineering.
Then control scheme is coming from the electrical
and electronics engineering and intelligent
issues are dealt in computer science. Now
it is bit difficult to learn actually this
particular subject robotics because one has
to be very good in fundamentals of all these
basic subjects and that is why it is bit difficult
to become a true roboticist. Now in this course
attempts will be made to discuss all the modules
in detail.
And there will be lot of numerical examples
and there will be analysis of a number of
robots. Now this particular course is actually
the multidisciplinary course. Now here if
you want to take this particular course there
is no prerequisite and I am just planning
to start from the very beginning, very scratch,
very definition of the robots and starting
from there through analysis, how to make it
the intelligent, so all such issues will be
discussed in details.
Now this course will be useful to the UG student,
PG students researches belonging to the various
disciplines of engine science and of course
it will be applicable to the practicing engineers.
Now regarding the books.
The textbook on robotics that is fundamentals
of robotics written by me will be the textbook
for this particular course and this book actually
deals with all 4 modules of robotics and of
course we have got a few reference books like
the robotics by Fu, Gonzalez and Lee.
It is a good book, similarly there is another
book introduction to robotics by JJ Craig
and others. So these are all the reference
books for the robots. Now the course material
for this robotics course will be available
in the form of PPT files, slides will be suppled
to you and there will be 8 assignments and
the solutions for the assignments will be
supplied to you. Now here in this particular
course there will be 3 teaching assistnats,
TAs and I am just going to introduce my TAs.
Now these TAs actually they are doing PhD
here under my supervision so I am just going
to call them to introduce one after another.
Let me introduce 3 TA’s for this robotics
course.
Saikat Sahu, we have Mr. Amir Das, Mr. Kondala
Rao. Now these TA’s are going to help you
in different ways if you have some doubts,
if you have some queries, you can send all
such queries to the forum and we all 4 are
going to discuss and we will try our level
best to help you in this particular course.
I hope all of you will enjoy this course and
learn a lot after attending this particular
course. So I welcome you all to this course.
I wish you all the best. Thank you.
