What to study to work in the field of Robotics?

[mexx]

help me out!!

hello

i am second year mech. engg. student and strongly want to pusue my dream field ROBOTICS . for that i know i need to study much electronics and programming stuff. :!:
please tell me all the things i should start studying!!!! :arrow:
i am studying pic micro & know c ,c++.

 

[Integrated]

Re: help me out!!

Hi, I am in the same situation,although i am an elec. eng.

I worked with 8051 and knew c and c++ vb and vc enough. i had to know about mosfets a lot and i had to know the basic digital electronics such as some ttls and cmoses whenever i wanted to perform any project.

(up to now basic analog elec is needed)

then i understood that 8051 is weak , so i started pic16f84 and finished it in one day , it was weak too. it didn't have the abilities of atmega. pwm generators which i needed them a lot for robotic team of my univ.

so i started atmega32 as a greate suitable micro, i had to learn a lot about serial intrface which is very important and jtag programing, which is more important, see in my situation i am not able to get atmega programmer and i have to build it myself which i am going to.i had to learn a lot of words such ac IC2,PSI,MUX,...... and a lot of other infinitives.
which are used a lot in all processor documents.(I am know working on a 200MHz powerpc microprocessor MPC8260 and i now know that , thoes datasheets(atmega datasheets) are greate ones for beginners to see the needed words.and they are the way to up)

so i recommend you to finnish that pic micro soon , altghogh pic is the most easiest micro i have worked with.(if you want micro only as a solution pic is great , otherwise it is weak and there would be a long way to be able to work with a good high frequency microprocessor such as tms or others and they will not be cought except for starting better but little microcontrollers such as atmega datasheets) I have example: my univ robotic team uses 8051 as controller but thier footballer robot (the name is IUT PERSIA) has the lack of moving resolution, it can not go 5cm and goes always more than 10cm when its motor starts.I told them if they use pwm generator of atmega this resolution will be 1cm or less.

and i recommend you to learn using parallel port of computer with c. it would be very very usefull always .

 

[ME]

Re: help me out!!

If you want to learn about the Atmel AVR microcontrollers (**broken link removed**) , you should check this link out:
www.avrfreaks.com
You have to register for free to get access to some areas of the site.

AVR's are very similar to PIC's but they are faster and just as easy to use.
I would recommend the CodeVisionAVR C-compiler for AVR C programming. It's very easy to get started with: www.hpinfotech.ro

You can also get a free GNU C-compiler for AVR (AVR GCC):
**broken link removed**

Here's a link for the "Introduction to Mechatronics" course at Santa Clara University:
**broken link removed**

Some other usefull links:
**broken link removed**
http://www.stanford.edu/class/ee281/
http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/101/EssentialC.pdf
http://instruct1.cit.cornell.edu/courses/ee476/
http://mechatronics.me.wisc.edu/
**broken link removed**

 

[you_rock]

Re: help me out!!!!!

Hey friend,

I would say that, that is a great idea!!! And I can tell you that a lot of people are working in this field of robotics such that they make LARGE robots for warehouses and big industries....

Start by studying inverse kinematics and movement of various objects in space --> i.e. all the math behind robotics Also, you might want to learn about linear algebra (vectors and matrices), calculus (speed, velocity, and accelaration)

This will help you gain more understanding of what a real world robot would do, then you can move on to more advanced topics such as graph solutions to movement of robots in space to object detection and placement.

That is all there is that I can tell you but if you want, you can acquire more information from a lot of webpages...I can not think of any good robotic webpages right now. I did a course in robotics in my 4th year at university and there they talked a lot about inverse kinematics and object pickup and delivery...we did a project too...Check out the link

good luck and take care

Caution: Robots may move suddenly without notice

:lol: