Discloses the elements of control theory and robot dynamics. Surveys computed-torque control, robust control of robotic manipulators, adaptive control of robotic manipulators, neural network control of robots, force control, and advanced control techniques. Includes information on designing and operating robotic platforms in discussing robot control implementation.

The word ‘robot’ was introduced by the Czech playwright Karel Capek in his 1920 play Rossum’s Universal Robots. The word ‘robota’ in Czech means simply ‘work’. In spite of such practical beginnings, science fiction writers and early Hollywood movies have given us a romantic notion of robots. The anthropomorphic nature of these machines seems to have introduced into the notion of robot some element of man’s search for his own identity.

The word ‘automation’ was introduced in the 1940’s at the Ford Motor Company, a contraction for ‘automatic motivation’. The single term ‘automation’ brings together two ideas: the notion of special purpose robotic machines designed to mechanically perform tasks, and the notion of an automatic control system to direct them.

The history of automatic control systems has deep roots. Most of the feedback controllers of the Greeks and Arabs regulated water clocks for the accurate telling of time; these were made obsolete by the invention of the mechanical clock in Switzerland in the fourteenth century. Automatic control systems only came into their own three hundred years later during the industrial revolution with the advent of machines sophisticated enough to require advanced controllers; we have in mind especially the windmill and the steam engine. On the other hand, though invented by others (e.g. T.Newcomen in 1712) the credit for the steam engine is usually assigned to James Watt, who in 1769 produced his engine which combined mechanical innovations with a control system that allowed automatic regulation. That is, modern complex machines are not useful unless equipped with a suitable control system.