Effective Teaching and Learning of Homogenous Transformation Matrix using RoboAnalyzer Software

Abstract

Robotics has become one of the important interdisciplinary course in engineering education. To describe the position and orientation of a robot, or any part of a robot, several methods are available. One of the commonly used methods is Homogenous Transformation Matrix (HTM), which consists of a Rotation matrix to represent the orientation and a Position vector to represent the position. The HTMs are extensively used in the forward and inverse kinematic formulations of the robots. However, teaching and learning of the concepts related to HTMs remain a challenge using conventional teaching tools. In this paper, a new module developed in RoboAnalyzer software is reported. It has an easy to use interface to visualize the position and orientation of one Coordinate frame with respect to another in a 3D environment. Also, various other useful features are present which help in effective understanding of the HTMs.