Robotics Library — Coverage Roadmap
What’s covered, what’s deferred. Updated as tiers complete.
Status (2026-05-23). Tier 1 + Tier 2 + Tier 3 are substantially complete. See
[[Robotics/_index]]for the canonical inventory. This roadmap is preserved as a historical decision log.
Decision log
- 2026-05-14 — Project initiated. Scope: all of robotics engineering (kinematics, dynamics, actuation, sensing, perception, planning, control, manipulation, mobility, power, safety, systems). Structure mirrors the Languages library (Tier 1 deep notes + Tier 2 deferred + Tier 3 family indexes). Sister library
Engineering/covers the underlying disciplines.
Tier 1 — Candidate set (proposed, pending user confirmation)
| # | Topic | Slug | Subdomain |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Forward & inverse kinematics + DH parameters | kinematics-dh.md | kinematics |
| 2 | Rigid-body dynamics (Newton-Euler & Lagrangian) | dynamics-rigid-body.md | dynamics |
| 3 | DC, BLDC, stepper & servo motors — selection & control | motors-electric.md | actuators |
| 4 | Encoders, resolvers, IMUs — pose & motion sensing | sensors-pose-motion.md | sensors |
| 5 | LiDAR, depth cameras, RGB cameras — exteroception | sensors-perception.md | sensors |
| 6 | Force / torque / tactile sensing | sensors-force-tactile.md | sensors |
| 7 | PID control — tuning, anti-windup, gain scheduling | pid-control.md | control |
| 8 | State-space & LQR control | state-space-lqr.md | control |
| 9 | Impedance & admittance control | impedance-control.md | control |
| 10 | Trajectory generation & motion profiles | trajectory-generation.md | planning |
| 11 | Path planning — A*, RRT, PRM, lattice planners | path-planning.md | planning |
| 12 | SLAM — visual, LiDAR, sensor fusion | slam.md | perception |
| 13 | Computer vision for robotics (features, depth, segmentation) | computer-vision-robotics.md | perception |
| 14 | Kalman filter family (EKF, UKF, particle filter) | bayesian-estimation.md | perception |
| 15 | Serial manipulator design — 6-DOF arms, SCARA, delta | manipulator-design.md | manipulation |
| 16 | Grippers & end-effectors — parallel-jaw, suction, soft, multi-finger | end-effectors.md | manipulation |
| 17 | Mobile base architectures — differential, holonomic, Ackermann | mobile-base-wheeled.md | mobility |
| 18 | Legged robot dynamics & control | legged-robotics.md | mobility |
| 19 | Multirotor / drone aerodynamics & control | multirotor-design.md | mobility |
| 20 | Power systems — batteries, BLDC drivers, regen | power-systems.md | power |
| 21 | Robot communication buses — CAN, EtherCAT, RS-485, I2C, SPI | comm-buses.md | systems |
| 22 | ROS 2 architecture & runtime | ros2-architecture.md | systems |
| 23 | Reinforcement learning for control | rl-for-control.md | control |
| 24 | Safety standards & functional safety (ISO 10218, IEC 61508, ISO 13849) | safety-standards.md | safety |
| 25 | Manipulability, workspace & dexterity analysis | manipulability-workspace.md | manipulation |
Total: 25 candidate Tier 1 deep notes.
Tier 2 — Deferred (likely candidates)
Soft robotics, compliant mechanisms, cable-driven robots, parallel manipulators, mobile manipulation, swarm robotics, teleoperation & haptics, underwater robotics, surgical robotics, agricultural robotics, humanoid balance control, dynamic locomotion (running/jumping), prosthetics, exoskeletons, bin-picking, vibration / damping / structural dynamics for robotic arms, robot calibration, model predictive control specific to robots.
Tier 3 — Encyclopedic family indexes (planned)
Will be populated similarly to Languages/Tier3 — broad family tables covering:
- Motor families — exhaustive taxonomy beyond the deep notes (servo motor sub-types, harmonic-drive motors, voice-coil actuators, linear motors, piezo motors, …)
- Sensor families — encoder variants (incremental, absolute, single-turn, multi-turn, capacitive, optical, magnetic, inductive), IMU vendors, depth-camera technologies, …
- End-effector taxonomy — every gripper morphology
- Manipulator topologies — 4-DOF / 5-DOF / 6-DOF / 7-DOF; serial / parallel / hybrid; cobot vs industrial
- Mobile-base wheel arrangements — diff drive, skid-steer, mecanum, omni, Swerve drive, …
- Legged morphologies — bipedal, quadrupedal, hexapod, …
- Drive electronics families — half-bridge, full-bridge, FOC, 6-step, sensorless, …
- Robot perception sensor zoo — LiDAR variants (2D/3D/solid-state/MEMS), depth-camera tech (ToF, structured light, stereo, plenoptic), RGB + event cameras, radar (mm-wave, FMCW), sonar, …
- Path-planning algorithm zoo — beyond the Tier 1 sampler
- SLAM algorithm zoo — visual / LiDAR / dense / sparse / direct / feature-based / event-based
- Control-algorithm zoo — broader than Tier 1; sliding mode, model-reference adaptive, ILC, …
Process
Same as the Languages library:
- User confirms Tier 1 candidate set (or modifies it).
- Parallel sub-agents write the deep notes in batches of 4-5.
- Cross-cutting sections (motor selection guide, sensor comparison, control-algorithm decision tree) follow.
- Tier 3 family indexes after Tier 1+2 are done.
Adjacent-library coverage
- Engineering library covers underlying disciplines (statics, materials, electromagnetics, thermodynamics, etc.) that robotics builds on. Robotics notes will cross-reference there.
- Languages/Tier3/robotics-control + ros2-robotics-config catalogue description-languages used in robotics (URDF, SDF, MoveIt SRDF, Nav2 BT XML, etc.) — already complete.