9451211 Erdmann This project exposes undergraduates to the fundamentals of manipulation robotics. We will build a teaching laboratory for undergraduates interested in robotics. The laboratory will be at an intermediate stage of advancement situated between the basics taught in an undergraduate robotics course and the advanced topics taught in first year graduate courses. The laboratory will provide hands-on experience for undergraduates. Our goal is to strengthen the manufacturing base by educating students in the fundamentals of industrial manipulation and by exposing them to the practical research results of the last two decades. We envision that the laboratory will contain a series of robots, geometric modeling systems, and small-scale factory work cells. The robots will be Zebra Zero force-controlled robots, controlled from workstations running planning and geometric modeling systems. Each robot will be given a camera and frame grabber for use in hand-eye tasks. Undergraduates will be expected to enroll in this laboratory course for academic credit. The curriculum will consist of a structured sequence of robot manipulation tasks, ranging from parts orienting, to parts assembly, to the planning and execution of cooperative robot strategies among several robots.
