International Summer School
Screw-Theory Based Methods in Robotics

August 22-30, 2009
University of Genoa, Italy

Summer Screws ‘09 will gather five experts in the robotics applications of screw-theory and up to 30 participants at the University of Genoa and the Italian Institute of Technology during the last week of August. The summer school will teach attendees how to apply existing methods and empower them to develop new ones in their own research. The basic theoretical notions will be introduced in a rigorous manner, with emphasis on examples, applications, and exercises.

The main topics will be:

1. Basic vector-space properties of twists and wrenches:
physical interpretation of the linear operations; linear
dependence and independence, subspaces; bases and coordinates.
(Lecturer: Dimiter Zlatanov)

2. Scalar products, dual spaces, reciprocity. Constraint and
freedom in mechanisms. Constraint analysis, type synthesis of
single loop mechanisms, type synthesis of parallel
manipulators. (Lecturers: Xianwen Kong and Dimiter Zlatanov)

3. Velocity and singularity analysis of parallel and
interconnected-chain mechanisms. Derivation of input-output
velocity equations and singularity conditions. (Lecturers:
Matteo Zoppi and Dimiter Zlatanov)

4. Mappings between screw spaces, stiffness and inertia.
Structure of robot compliance. Eigenvalue problems and
eigenscrews. Synthesis with springs. (Lecturer: Harvey Lipkin)

5. 6D formulation of the dynamics of individual rigid bodies
and rigid-body systems. Equations of motion. Dynamics
algorithms.(Lecturer: Roy Featherstone)