Introducing Robotics

Explore how robots are used in mechanisation, exploration, and building

Robots were once only found in fiction, but today they have become an important technology used widely in society. They mechanise industrial tasks, help us explore places humans can’t go, and can even help heal us.

On this three-week course, you’ll examine your perceptions of robotics, and how attitudes previously formed from fiction are significantly different to how robots are used today.

You’ll delve into the true role of robots in our society and be able to define a real robot, and what they can do. You’ll also investigate the importance of robotics as a field to understand their capabilities and the opportunities for the future.

Identify the ethical considerations of using different types of robots

You’ll discover the different types of robots and how they are applied to help us in a variety of ways, including exploring and monitoring our world.

You’ll also examine the ethical, privacy, and safety considerations of using robotics, particularly when we look at solving societal challenges. Just because we can use robots, does that mean we should?

Examine the role of robots in the future as a useful technology

On the course, you’ll be encouraged to join discussions on using robotics in the future.

You’ll learn how robots could be used to overcome challenges such as food production, ageing population, transport, and environmental change, and discuss the effects this could have on our society.

You’ll predict and reflect on the future role of the development of robotics, and gain a deeper understanding of how robots and humans interact.

This course is designed for anyone interested in discovering how our society currently uses robots, and how we might use them to solve big challenges in the future.

You don’t need any robotics knowledge or experience to join this course.

Everything you need to succeed in this course is provided. There is no specific equipment or software required.

Discover how robots can be programmed to move

This three-week course delves into the growing world of the robotics industry, and what it takes to make robots move.

You’ll begin by exploring the capabilities of robots and learning the mathematics behind robotic movement.

With this knowledge, you’ll consider objects in a two-dimensional plane, exploring the concepts of position, pose, rotation, and translation, as you unpack the process of how robots work and move.

Understand the principles of kinematics including forward and inverse kinematics

Robot movement relies on the principles of kinematics – the motion of a body or bodies.

You’ll develop your programming skills as you learn how to program forward kinematics equations in practical MATLAB assignments.

You’ll also learn approaches to inverse kinematics and dive into principles of join control theory to increase your theoretical and practical knowledge of robotic movement.

Move on to advanced techniques in 3D robotics

Guided by the experts at the Queensland University of Technology, you’ll get a taste of 3D robotics to understand the complexity of types of motion in 3D.

By the end of the course, you’ll feel comfortable in being able to explain the capabilities of robots, with an understanding of the mathematics and programming behind making a robot move.

This course is designed for those with some knowledge of advanced high-school mathematics or engineering – in particular, analytic geometry and linear algebra.

You should also know how to program in MATLAB to complete the practical exercises.

Everything you need to succeed in this course is provided, or can be downloaded for free. If you’d like to attempt the exercises throughout this course, you will be using a program called MATLAB. With support from MathWorks, free access to MATLAB will be provided for the duration of the course plus 30 days.

All exercises are embedded in the course, so you don’t need to have MATLAB to participate.

However, if you’d like to follow along with Professor Corke’s MATLAB demonstrations, work on the exercises, or explore topics on your own, MathWorks has provided a licence for MATLAB Online for this course. We will guide you through the setup of MATLAB and the Robotics Toolbox at the beginning of the course. The use of MATLAB is what will really give you a powerful learning experience, letting you try out the exercises and examples provided.

If you have not used MATLAB before, and would like to take a two-hour introductory course, please check out the MATLAB Academy’s MATLAB Onramp course. This covers the MATLAB basics with walk-through activities. This is an optional activity.