RAS545 Laboratory Instructions

This repository contains instructions for performing laboratory activities of RAS545 course taught at Arizona State University at the School of Manufacturing Systems and Networks. Refer to the course syllabus for course details and structure.

Course Description

Analysis and design of robotic systems focusing on kinematics, dynamics, coordinate transformations and modeling.

Laboratory Objectives

1. Understand and apply kinematics and dynamics principles to perform robot manipulation tasks.
2. Get hands-on experience with education-grade robots, and industrial robots.
3. Understand robot programming on various platforms, perform and verify robot simulations and deploy automation tasks on real-robots.
4. Learn the use of software such as MATLAB, SolidWorks, ROS, Python etc. in robot workflows.

Laboratory Software

1. MATLAB: See how to obtain license for MATLAB for ASU students. Instructions to install MATLAB can be found here. Scroll down to find MATLAB installation instructions.
2. SolidWorks: See how to obtain license for SolidWorks for ASU students. SolidWorks can be installated for ASU students from myapps.asu.edu.
3. Python: Python is a free and open-sourced programming language. See how to install Python on your system here.
4. ROS: ROS is a free and open-sourced robotics middleware. See how to install ROS 2 here. You may also install ROS 1 depending on your OS platform.
5. Text editor: Choose a Text-editor of your choice. Recommended text editor for this course is VS Code. See how to install VS Code here.

Technical Guidelines

1. Labs will usually involve a robot manipulation task.
2. Software necessary for conducting lab activities will be mentioned in their respective folders.
3. All technical instructions necessary for the conducting the lab activity will be provided in this repository with an announcement for every important changes.
4. Students facing technical problems can raise issues to this repo. We'll be addressing technical issues on github.
5. Raising an Issue: Go to RAS545 Issues and create a new issue. Provide an appropriate issue title and adequate information in description of the issue. Submit after filling up all details.
6. Issues will be addressed as they come. Once and issue is resolved it will be closed within 24 hours.
7. Irrelevant issues will be closed as not planned.