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 hands on a copy once, so for the benefit of posterity (and future digital archaeologists) I am sharing it.
AIM-177
The top right of every page is a 3D line drawing (computer generated) of the Stanford arm doing a task. If this were a print document that would be a flip book. It would be super cool to extract this and turn it into an animated GIF…
It’s Richard (Lou) Paul’s PhD dissertation and covers a lot of topics that are now in the realm of undergraduate curriculum and hobbyists, and commodified in many software packages. It was later published as a textbook
Robot Manipulators: mathematics, programming and control. The computer control of robot manipulators Richard P. Paul MIT Press 1981
but is sadly now out of print. It was my first robotics textbook and I do remember being deeply confused by many of the concepts its covered. I had the honour to work with Lou Paul at the GRASP Lab (U.Penn) in 1988. My own book Robotics, Vision & Control was inspired by Lou (and his book) and includes a dedication to him.