Fundamental and technological topics are blended uniquely and developed clearly in nine chapters with a gradually increasing level of complexity. A wide variety of relevant problems is raised throughout, and the proper tools to find engineering-oriented solutions are introduced and explained, step by step. Fundamental coverage includes: Kinematics; Statics and dynamics of manipulators; Trajectory planning and motion control in free space. Technological aspects include: Actuators; Sensors; Hardware/software control architectures; Industrial robot-control algorithms. Furthermore, established research results involving description of end-effector orientation, closed kinematic chains, kinematic redundancy and singularities, dynamic parameter identification, robust and adaptive control and force/motion control are provided. To provide readers with a homogeneous background, three appendices are included on: Linear algebra; Rigid-body mechanics; Feedback control. To acquire practical skill, more than 50 examples and case studies are carefully worked out and interwoven through the text, with frequent resort to simulation. In addition, more than 80 end-of-chapter exercises are proposed, and the book is accompanied by a solutions manual containing the MATLAB code for computer problems; this is available from the publisher free of charge to those adopting this work as a textbook for courses.

Fundamental and technological topics are uniquely blended and clearly developed in nine chapters - with a gradually increasing level of complexity. A wide variety of relevant problems is raised throughout, and the proper tools to find engineering oriented solutions are introduced and explained, step by step the book's coverage is further enriched by the inclusion of trajectory planning, actuators, sensors, and control architectures - which are topics not commonly found in other texts, despite their significance for today's industrial robotics.

The objective of this dissertation is to advance the state-of-the-art in the kinematic modeling, identification, and control of robotic manipulators with rigid links in an effort to improve robot kinematic performance. The positioning accuracy of commercially-available industrial robotic manipulators depends upon a kinematic model which describes the robot geometry in a parametric form. Manufacturing error in the machining and assembly of manipulators lead to discrepancies between the design parameters and the physical structure. Improving the kinematic perfor mance thus requires the identification of the actual kinematic parameters of each individual robot. The identified kinematic parameters are referred to as the arm signature. Existing robot kinematic models, such as the Denavit-Hartenberg model, are not directly applicable to kinematic parameter identification. In this dissertation we introduce a new kinematic model, called the 5-Model, which is applicable to kinematic parameter identification, and use it as the foundation for our development of a general technique for identifying the kinematic parameters of any robot with rigid links.

Aerial robots, meaning robots with flying capabilities, are essentially robotic platforms, which are autonomously controlled via some sophisticated control engineering tools. Similar to aerial vehichles, they can overcome the gravitational forces thanks to their design and/or actuation type. What makes them different from the conventional aerial vehicles, is the level of their autonomy. Reducing the complexity for piloting of such robots/vehicles provide the human operator more freedom and comfort. With their increasing autonomy, they can perform many complicated tasks by their own (such as surveillance, monitoring, or inspection), leaving the human operator the most high-level decisions to be made, if necessary. In this way they can be operated in hazardous and challenging environments, which might posses high risks to the human health. Thanks to their wide range of usage, the ongoing researches on aerial robots is expected to have an increasing impact on the human life. Aerial Physical Interaction (APhI) is a case, in which the aerial robot exerts meaningful forces and torques (wrench) to its environment while preserving its stable flight. In this case, the robot does not try avoiding every obstacle in its environment, but prepare itself for embracing the effect of a physical interaction, furthermore turn this interaction into some meaningful robotic tasks. Aerial manipulation can be considered as a subset of APhI, where the flying robot is designed and controlled in purpose of manipulating its environment. A clear motivation of using aerial robots for physical interaction, is to benefit their great workspace and agility. Moreover, developing robots that can perform not only APhI but also aerial manipulation can bring the great workspace of the flying robots together with the vast dexterity of the manipulating arms. This thesis work is addressing the design, modeling and control problem of these aerial robots for the purpose of physical interaction and manipulation. Using the nonlinear mathematical models of the robots at hand, in this thesis several different control methods (IDA-PBC, Exact Linearization, Differential Flatness Based Control) for APhI and aerial manipulation tasks have been developed and proposed. Furthermore, novel design tools (e.g. new rigid/elastic manipulating arms, hardware, software) to be used together with miniature aerial robots are presented within this thesis, which contributes to the robotics society not only in terms of concrete theory but also practical implementation and experimental robotics.

Robot manipulators are developing more in the direction of industrial robots than of human workers. Recently, the applications of robot manipulators are spreading their focus, for example Da Vinci as a medical robot, ASIMO as a humanoid robot and so on. There are many research topics within the field of robot manipulators, e.g. motion planning, cooperation with a human, and fusion with external sensors like vision, haptic and force, etc. Moreover, these include both technical problems in the industry and theoretical problems in the academic fields. This book is a collection of papers presenting the latest research issues from around the world.

The robotic mechanism and its controller make a complete system. As the robotic mechanism is reconfigured, the control system has to be adapted accordingly. The need for the reconfiguration usually arises from the changing functional requirements. This book will focus on the adaptive control of robotic manipulators to address the changed conditions. The aim of the book is to summarise and introduce the state-of-the-art technologies in the field of adaptive control of robotic manipulators in order to improve the methodologies on the adaptive control of robotic manipulators. Advances made in the past decades are described in the book, including adaptive control theories and design, and application of adaptive control to robotic manipulators.

This volume contains 92 papers on the state-of-the-art in robotics research. In this volume topics on modelling and identification are treated first as they build the basis for practically all control aspects. Then, the most basic control tasks are discussed i.e. problems of inverse kinematics. Groups of papers follow which deal with various advanced control aspects. They range from rather general methods to more specialized topics such as force control and control of hydraulic robots. The problem of path planning is addressed and strategies for robots with one arm, for mobile robots and for multiple arm robots are presented. Also covered are computational improvements and software tools for simulation and control, the integration of sensors and sensor signals in robot control.