robotics

Podcast Galore

Even though I am usually not fond of information transmitted over the audio, for some reason I was fascinated by the idea of podcasts ever since I first heard of it. But somehow, I never find the time to listen to the podcasts that I seem to care about, so the unread episodes just keep on pilling and pilling. This week, I decided to dedicate it to podcasts and listen to everything that was on my list.

Teaching Robotic Systems Control

One of the things that always excited me, even as a young student, was to be able to explain things that we learned at school/university at my colleagues. And one of the reasons for choosing an academic career was because of this internal drive to explain to others. You can imagine then that teaching for me is not a secondary obligation as an academic, but it is part of the fun part of it!

Robotic Systems Control

This pages gathers all the relevant information for the Robotic Systems Control course and laboratory, taught at UTCluj on the winter semster of the academic year 2019-2020. Lectures You can download the presentations for each lecture here (soon to be completed): Lecture 00 (Introduction) Lecture 01 (Mathematical Background) Lecture 02 (Direct Geometric Model) Lecture 03 (Denavit-Hartenberg Convention) Lecture 04 (Inverse Kinematics) Lecture 05 (The Jacobian) Lecture 06 (Dynamic Modeling I) Lecture 07 (Dynamic Modeling II) Lecture 08 (Controller Design) Lecture 09 (‘Ask me anything’ session) Lecture 10 (Drone Modeling) Lecture 11 (Mobile Robots Modeling) Lecture 12 (Sensors, Actuation, Planning) Lecture 13 (Robotic Operating System - ROS) Lecture 14 (Summary) Some lectures contain animations.

Tranformation matrices

One of the concepts that I had to use constantly during my research, but never really manage to get my head around, was the concept of transformations represented as matrices. It was something I was not formally taught and ended up being forced to use and understand in a slow and painful way. And I finally managed to grasp it when I would least expect it: when I had to teach it to others!

ROS

Since I started working on the BETER REHAB project, I decided to use ROS as the central platform to implement all the logic for the controller of the robotic arm. This was due to two reasons: a) ROS is considered a MUST for anyone doing robotics and b) I really wanted to learn something new (those that know me can understand that this is a very big motivation for me).

BETER REHAB

A two year long research project funded by UEFISCDI.

UEFISCDI Grant

About a year ago (to be more precise, a year and 3 months ago), I applied for a grant at the UEFISCDI research agency. The initial plan was to have the results by May 2017 and start working on the projects sometime during the summer. Long story short, we had quite some delays, receiving news about the ranking only a few weeks ago. Last week, we got the final answer, and the news were good: The government had allocated the budget for the projects for this year and our proposal was among the funded ones!

Playing with the Cyton Gamma 1500

About a year and a half ago, I started working at the Robotics group at the Technical University of Cluj-Napoca. The goal was (and still is) to develop a robotic rehabilitation framework, using biomechanics in the loop, to be used with post-stroke patients. Today, I finally started getting my hands dirty (still waiting for funding for the project) and things are moving. Literally :) One of the ideas for the project is to use the Cyton Gamma 1500 that is available at our lab, and I am starting to learn how to use it.