Introduction to the Robotics science

Expected skills : 32 (321/322/323), 34 (341/342/343), 63 (633/634), 111 (1111/1112), 112 (1121/1122)

The market of robotic systems is in full changes: it moves from an activity of manufacturing robotics quite stable to a boom predicted by 2025 concerning the service robotics (the global turnover will reach 40 billion dollars compared with the 3-4 billion, at present).
At present time, all the big countries are strongly mobilized whether it is the United States, Japan or China and Korea. The mobile and cooperative robotics, strongly overlaps with the service robotics, concerns numerous application fields such as: the moving of charges of several robots and the picking up of objects in all zones unsafe for human life, the mine clearance, the planetary exploration, goods and people safety/observation, the culture and the heritage (mobile robots which acts as guide during the museum visit can interact with visitors according to the informational context) and the urban vehicles coordination.
We suggest students ( who want to discover robotics) to design and carry out an autonomous mobile robot which answers to a scope statement proposed by a client. This realisation will be made into two years during the M1 and M2 modules. The first step (M1), students have to design the mechanic part of robot considering all the robot's elements (engine, sensors, batteries, electronic cards, embedded PC) and make plans. The next year (M2), they will finish the mechanic design and will carry out the robot (sensors choice, engines choice, embedded PC, realisation of electronic cards, computer program structure). In the Advanced Robotics module, they will implement the navigation strategies necessaries to answer to given scope statement.
The course will show elements which constitute a mobile robot while insisting on the critical parts of it in order to give student the basis necessaries to a mobile robot construction. We are going to insist, more particularly, on the mechanic design of robot.
At the end of the course, student should know what are the elements which constitute a robot and what are the key-points that it is unavoidable to make attention to design a powerful mobile robot. It also must be able to design the mechanic part of a mobile robot and provide the associated plans.