Six Degrees of Freedom

WHY 6-DEGREES OF FREEDOM SHOULD BE ON YOUR CURRICULUM

Six degrees of freedom is not on the UK based schools curriculum and needs to be as it marks an important distinction between robots and machine.

What is 6-degrees of freedom

This is the priniciple that to be able to position and orient an object you need 6 dimensions. Three scalar position the object i.e. the distance up-down, left-right and back-and-forth. There are also three dimensions that you can rotate the object into a given orientation: yaw, pitch and roll. These are rotational dimensions associated with the x, y and z axis where the object is oriented towards the viewer.

Where can this be applied?

While the terminology for positioning an object in 3D space is well understood the terminology for orienting the is not. People are more likely to say things like rotate it up or turn it left and these are subjective to the orientation of the person issueing the instruction. This terminology is used largely in aviation but I believe that it has applications in:

Virtual and augmented reality
Computer-aided-design
Robotics Engineering
Unmanned Arial Vehicle Control

All of these fields are growth fields as such I believe the need to provide curriculum opportunities to develop a lexicon to describe orientation in three-dimensional space. I believe that there is also a range of opportunities for this language to be applied outside the field of STEM for example in a domestic setting you may be more able to describe how to orient a piece of funiture when you move it down the stairs.

Why is this important to Robotics?

The role of a robotic arm is to orient an object in three-dimensional space. In order to do this they will need to have six motorised joints in order to have complete control over the position and orientation of the end-point actuator; be it a gripper, spray can or drill.

The autonomy that six-degrees-of-freedom gives a robot to orient things in space also (providing that the end-point actuator on the robotic are is interchangeable) allows the robot to be repurposed for a different task within the scope of the space that the arm can access.

Imagine a robotic arm that is programmed to serve ice cream in a shipping-container-style kiosk. This same robotic arm could be reprogrammed to serve drinks and even aid the transitions between the functions of the container changing from an ice cream stall to a bar by removing the furniture, decorating the walls and assembling new furniture.

The notion of six degrees of freedom may also form part of a working definition of what distinguishes a robot from a machine. In the same way that a computer is not just reconfiguarble it is reprogrammable, a robot is repurposable because it has six degrees of freedom. This makes the robotic arm a significant device in human history in the same way that the computer gave us complete autonomy of processing information, robotic arms give us complete autonomy of processing objects within physical space.

How should this be integrated into the curricullum?

The primary and middle school curricullum would certainly be able to explain what 6 degrees of freedom to pupils, its applications and significance within robotics. This would happen within the mathematics currcicullum. In year 9 pupils should have a good grasp of

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