Collaborative, intelligent and humanoid robotics

MSc in Automation and Control Engineering

Prof. Paolo Rocco, Prof. Andrea Maria Zanchettin

Schedule

TU 10:15-12:15 room B.51

WE 16:15-18:15 room B.51

Learning objectives and course syllabus

Robotics has significantly evolved in the last years, moving from the traditional paradigms of the industrial robotics to new scenarios, where robots collaborate with humans, are aware of the environment where they operate, learn from experience, and even get human-like appearance. The purpose of this course is to expose the students to modern robotics, with special focus on collaborative applications, intelligent interaction, and humanoid robotics.

Course syllabus is as follows:

1. Review of robot kinematics (*)

Rigid body kinematics.

Direct, inverse and differential kinematics of a robot arm.

Singularities.

 2. Review of robot dynamics (*)

Dynamic model of a robot.

Inertia matrix.

3. Collaborative robotics

Motivations and use cases.

Collaborative applications.

4. Safety standards in collaborative robotics

Electromechanical drives with safety functionalities (STO, SOS, SLS, SLP).

Safety-rated monitored stop, hand guiding, speed and separation monitoring, power and force limiting.

Risk assessment: process, tools and methods. Examples.

5. Humanoid robots

Introduction to humanoid robots: motivations, classifications, market.

Complete dynamic model. Zero moment point. Simplified dynamic model: linear inverted pendulum.

Whole-body control.

Legged locomotion. Stability and gait generation.

Use cases in humanoid robotics.

6. Robot learning

Review on neural networks.

Learning from humans: Imitation learning, Dynamic Movement Primitives, DeepDMP

Learning on their own (Reinforcement Learning, SAC)

7. Emerging applications in robotics

Service robotics, robotics in construction, robotics in healthcare.

(*) These topics will be included only in the academic year 2026/27

Some of the practice sessions will make use of computer simulation tools and of commercial tools for robot offline programming.

Prerequisites

Basics in Automatic Control and Mechanics.

Bibliography

Lecture notes

B. Siciliano, L. Villani, G. Oriolo, A. De Luca: Foundations of Robotics., Springer, 2025 (in English)

Lecture notes

Lecture notes are available in the WeBeep channel for students enrolled in the course.

Lab session with ABB RobotStudio

RobotStudio is a professional virtual environment for offline programming of robots, interfaced with a virtual controller.

Please install beforehand your own copy of RoboStudio. You can download the software at the following address:

https://new.abb.com/products/robotics/robotstudio

Please notice that it is a somewhat heavy download (about 2 GB). Also the program runs only in a Microsoft Windows PC.

Following the instructions available at the above web page, you should fill a form to request your own copy of the software and then, after installation, activate a free license that is valid for 30 days. Interested students can ask us for a license for educational purposes (we have several of them).

Once you have installed RobotStudio, you also need to install the appropriate RobotWare for our lab sessions. Follow these instructions:

 -open RobotStudio

-select the tab "Add-ins"

-select the version 6.11.02 of the RobotWare IRC5 and install it

Once the installation is complete, by selecting again the tab "Add-ins", the installed RobotWare will show up under the installed packages. Please proceed to the installation of the RobotWare before the lab session.

Exams

Students will take a written examination, integrated by an oral one at the instructor's discretion. Text of the exam will be in English, solutions should preferably be given in English.

Texts of exams are published here.

Results of the exams will be notified to the students through the online services.