This textbook – a result of the author’s many years of research and teaching – brings together diverse concepts of the versatile tool of multibody dynamics, combining the efforts of many researchers in the field of mechanics.

"This volume ... consists of a book with full texts of invited talks and attached CD-ROM with Extended Summaries of 1225 papers presented during the Congress"--p. x.

Robot and Multibody Dynamics: Analysis and Algorithms provides a comprehensive and detailed exposition of a new mathematical approach, referred to as the Spatial Operator Algebra (SOA), for studying the dynamics of articulated multibody systems. The approach is useful in a wide range of applications including robotics, aerospace systems, articulated mechanisms, bio-mechanics and molecular dynamics simulation. The book also: treats algorithms for simulation, including an analysis of complexity of the algorithms, describes one universal, robust, and analytically sound approach to formulating the equations that govern the motion of complex multi-body systems, covers a range of more advanced topics including under-actuated systems, flexible systems, linearization, diagonalized dynamics and space manipulators. Robot and Multibody Dynamics: Analysis and Algorithms will be a valuable resource for researchers and engineers looking for new mathematical approaches to finding engineering solutions in robotics and dynamics.

This book develops the fundamentals of multibody dynamics from the principles of elementary mechanics. It is written in a tutorial style with numerous examples and an emphasis upon computational methods. This book should be accessible to anyone with a basic knowledge of elementary mechanics and analysis. Multibody Dynamics examines the behavior of systems of bodies subjected to forces or constraints. The bodies may be securely or loosely connected, and flexible or rigid. Such generality allows the use of multibody systems to model an increasing number of physical systems ranging from robots, biosystems (human body models), satellite booms, large structures, chains and cables. Until recently, analyses of such systems were virtually intractable. With the availability of high-speed digital computers, however, and with corresponding advances in analysis methods, multibody dynamics analyses are not only feasible, they are also practical, and applicable, to these important physical systems.

Based on the successful Modelling and Control of Robot Manipulators by Sciavicco and Siciliano (Springer, 2000), Robotics provides the basic know-how on the foundations of robotics: modelling, planning and control. It has been expanded to include coverage of mobile robots, visual control and motion planning. A variety of problems is raised throughout, and the proper tools to find engineering-oriented solutions are introduced and explained. The text includes coverage of fundamental topics like kinematics, and trajectory planning and related technological aspects including actuators and sensors. To impart practical skill, examples and case studies are carefully worked out and interwoven through the text, with frequent resort to simulation. In addition, end-of-chapter exercises are proposed, and the book is accompanied by an electronic solutions manual containing the MATLAB® code for computer problems; this is available free of charge to those adopting this volume as a textbook for courses.