A teaching method for the theory and application of robot kinematics based on MATLAB and V-REP

With the continuous development of the world, robots are necessary for achieving high production rates and competitiveness. With an increasing robot demand, many universities offer robotics courses. These courses teach students the mathematical principles of robot-related algorithms. However, it is difficult for students to apply pure mathematical algorithms in robotics to real robot development in a traditional classroom. This paper's motivation is to present a new robotics teaching method: Algorithm, Virtual experiment, Programming and Controller (AVPC), which shows students the steps of complete robot algorithm development, verification, and application process, taking the kinematics of an educational desktop 6-DOF robotic arm as a typical teaching case. For the low-cost educational desktop six-axis robotic arm, an inverse kinematics algorithm is proposed. The inverse solution algorithm is realized in MATLAB, and then the dynamic model of the desktop robotic arm is established in Virtual Robot Experimentation Platform (V-REP). The inverse kinematics algorithm in MATLAB is used to control the virtual robot arm movement in V-REP to the specified position and orientation through the application programming interface (API) interface, thus verifying the correctness of the inverse kinematics algorithm. The inverse algorithm is implemented by using C language function in the microcontroller, and the running time of the algorithm is compared with that of the iterative solution method. In the present study, we investigated the students' feelings and exam scores of using the new teaching method. The results show that the new teaching method has a significant impact on the improvement of students' learning effect of robotics.