How Robots Use Maths to Move

I can't believe you've broken down something I was so intimidated about into really lovely trigonometry. Treating each solved distance as a black box for later trig makes it so elegant. Thank you for teaching real skills in your videos. I really appreciate the work you do!

"What is my purpose?" ... "Oh my god..."

Just need a 2nd one and they can go forever playing “your ball! No! Your ball!”

Your skill with all facets of robotics is truly impressive- concept, 3D design and printing, assembly, math and coding, testing and refinement. So impressed!

I had to learn the maths for my EPQ project last year and I didn't entirely understand it. Now it makes sense!!! Great video and can't wait for the next one!

This robot is missing an important feature: googly eyes.

I love how with channels like this even the ad portion is interesting. No crummy mobile game ad, but actually relevant and useful companies as sponsors

You sir, are making the world a better place with your videos. The inverse kinematics you showed was far simpler than how I imagined it to be. I was over here trying to use MatLab to create Differential Equations and then setup a robotic simulation with moments of inertia, COM, etc. Your video ultimately brought me back to the realization that 'baby steps first' would be my best move instead of just leaping into the deep end. That said, there is nothing that teaches like a project does, and yours are always fun to watch and learn from (like when you built a camera that follows you or the backpack disc that spins to balance you on a beam walk)

I love how this is even used in video games for almost anything dynamically animated. The best example is VR, inverse kinematics is used to calculate where the elbow should be located based off of your shoulders and hands in-game. Thanks so much for this video! It really helps introduce me to IK which I was always scared of learning, great job breaking down the math behind it to make it sound really simple and straight forward.

This is one of the simplest practical demonstrations of inverse kinematics i have ever seen. Hats of to you James!

I teach High School Engineering (in the states) and seeing you break down robotics into simple Trig allows me to show the students how Geometry is applied in robotics at this basic level. I hope this will inspire some students to go into robotics.

This is very inspiring! I've been wanting to make something similar recently and I've also been taking trigonometry in college right now, so seeing how you implemented it in inverse kinematics was awesome to see and providing the code too! I find this helpful.

Got a recommendation on youtube to watch some of your videos about robotics and I didn't know why given all my recent searches are for procedural animation. A few hours later youtube recommends this to me and now I understand. I see your tricks youtube.

Brilliant! YouTube served up your reverse kinematics demo deo up to me, which led me to this video, (right in the middle of your process), and it all made perfect sense, because you are a gifted teacher. Subscribed!

Thanks a lot for this very informative and inspiring video James! The first thing I was thinking of when I saw the gripper was: 'Why not use suction?'. Also learned a thing or two about inverse kinematics. Maybe I'll give it a try in the future!

12:09 What the robot hears: "Standard insertion for a nonstandard specimen. Go ahead, Gordon. Slot the carrier into the analysis port."

“The great ball contraption” “The high voltage ball accelerator” Great naming scheme Monsieur Bruton

Thanks so much for this James. I've been watching through a bunch of your videos again while at work (I'm a D.E. teacher - coding of various kins, and robotics (using Robbo)). I had bought one of those cheap robotic arm kits from Lazada, to which I added the servos and an Arduino. At first I coded it to work sequentially, which was all I knew how to do, so arm rotation, then vertical arm movement, then the claw. It randomly selects a position by choosing numbers in the pre-defined range of movement for each servo. But, while watching this video, and others, I worked out a way to program simultaneous movement. I'm not using timing, or anything like that. It takes the current position for each servo, and the newly selected position, calculates the difference for each servo, then divides by 100. I then have a loop of 100 iterations that adjusts the position of each servo in the required direction be adding or subtracting the number and writing to the servo for each iteration of the loop. So, I have a relatively smooth transition of all three servos from current to new position. The claw is changed separately after the arm finishes moving. The servos for this arm are SG90s, so they're a bit rough a jittery, but they do the job. I've also added LEDs that light up when each part of the code is being executed and I hope to add a 2 row LCD display to show the position numbers for each servo while it is operating. The robot is mounted on the back wall of my classroom purely as a demo piece, so serves no practical functionality except the most important one - to inspire my students. Thanks again for your awesome channel! I actually feel like building a bigger arm now from scratch, perhaps using PVC piping and 3D printed joints, or metal joints, like in your example here. Hmmm!

Oh my gosh, Thank you so much James, i've struggled to wrap my head around IK for so long on how it works, I'm doing game dev in uni but could never understood how IK actually works. I've watched videos working with unity but none of them explained this in an easy way like you have, been subscribed to your channel for a while now and was not expecting to learn something i've been wanting to learn in game dev from you. So thank you so much sir! ahaha

wow, i am just learning the math behind the movements in my robotic career