Software for robotics, vision and other things. This includes the robotics and machine vision toolboxes for MATLAB®.

These become a book, then two MOOCs, and then
the Robot Academy.

Everything is freeware so enjoy!

Robot Academy

The QUT Robot Academy provides free-to-use undergraduate-level learning resources for robotics and robotic vision. The content was developed for two 6-week MOOCs that ran in 2015 and 2016, which in turn was based on courses taught at QUT. The MOOC content is now available as individual lessons (over 200 videos, each less than 10 minutes long) or a masterclass (a collection of videos, around 1 hour in duration, previously a MOOC lecture). Unlike a MOOC, all lessons are available all the time. Although targeted at undergraduate-level around 20% of the lessons require no more than general knowledge, and the required knowledge (on a 5-point scale) is indicated for each lesson.

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Robotics Toolbox

Robotics Toolbox

This, the tenth release of the Toolbox, represents over twenty years of development and a substantial level of maturity. This version captures a large number of changes and extensions to support the second edition of my book “Robotics, Vision & Control”.

The Toolbox has always provided many functions that are useful for the study and simulation of classical arm-type robotics, for example such things as kinematics, dynamics, and trajectory generation.

The toolbox contains functions and classes to represent orientation and pose in 2D and 3D (SO(2), SE(2), SO(3), SE(3)) as matrices, quaternions, twists, triple angles, and matrix exponentials. The Toolbox also provides functions for manipulating and converting between datatypes such as vectors, homogeneous transformations and unit-quaternions which are necessary to represent 3-dimensional position and orientation.

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Machine Vision Toolbox

Machine Vision Toolbox

This, the fourth release of the Toolbox, represents over two decades of development. This version captures a large number of changes and extensions to support the second edition of my book “Robotics, Vision & Control”.

The Machine Vision Toolbox (MVTB) provides many functions that are useful in machine vision and vision-based control. It is a somewhat eclectic collection reflecting my personal interest in areas of photometry, photogrammetry, colorimetry. It includes over 100 functions spanning operations such as image file reading and writing, acquisition, display, filtering, blob, point and line feature extraction, mathematical morphology, homographies, visual Jacobians, camera calibration and color space conversion.

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Robotics, Vision & Control

Robotics Vsion and Control

The book has been extensively revised throughout and includes new figures, more consistent notation and new content including: Lie groups, matrix exponentials and twists; inertial navigation; differential drive robots; lattice planners; pose-graph SLAM and map making; restructured material on arm-robot kinematics and dynamics; series-elastic actuators and operational-space control; Lab color spaces; light field cameras; structured light, bundle adjustment and visual odometry; and photometric visual servoing.

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Latest Posts

A wonderful early robotics reference: AIM-177

Somebody recently asked me about this Stanford AI lab technical memo which I cite in my book: Modelling, trajectory calculation and serving of a computer controlled arm. Richard Paul November 1972 It’s hard to get hold of, but I did get my hand...

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Future of the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB

Key points The Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB®, Machine Vision Toolbox for MATLAB and Spatial Math Toolbox for MATLAB will reach end of life in January 2022.  The source code will remain open and free (as in speech), just no longer maintained. There a...

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For 25 years the Robotics Toolbox for MATLAB® has been used for teaching and research worldwide. This paper describes its successor – the Robotics Toolbox for Python. More than just a port, it takes advantage of popular open- source packages and r...

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Interbotix WidowX 250 6DoF desktop robot

I’ve just taken delivery of a new desktop robot arm, a significant upgrade from my old PhantomX Pincher.  Here are some initial notes and impressions. While there is a lot of software available, including ROS support, I’m being stubborn ...

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Some resources for learning robotics online

Here is a curated list of resources available for learning robotics online.  ...

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Gory details of the Unimate Puma 560 controller

I stumbled across this old old report from 1991.  I wrote it in the early days of my second job, where I was trying to get a Puma 560 robot to do force control.  I got a bit carried away in reverse engineering the control box. Unimate Pu... File si...

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