Roy's Teaching Materials

The 2026 edition of Summer Screws was taught at University College Cork, Ireland, from 19th to 25th July.  The official website is (or was) here.  Roy's teaching materials are below.

• Roy's materials for Summer Screws 2026

Roy used to teach two courses at graduate level for the University of Genoa.  They were held at IIT, and were open to everyone.  The last time they were held was May 2022, and the materials for that edition are listed below.

Introduction to Spatial (6D) Vectors

• Course Notes 2022: slides, notes, question and answer sheets.
• Official Course Description 2022
• If you have access to IEEE documents then you are recommended to get a copy of the Beginner's Guide part 1 and part 2.

Computational Robot Dynamics

• Course Notes 2022: slides, notes, question and answer sheets.
• Official Course Description 2022
• You should also download the spatial arithmetic library Spatial_v2.

• A Beginner's Guide to 6-D Vectors (Part 1) and
• A Beginner's Guide to 6-D Vectors (Part 2).

This two-part tutorial (available via IEEE Xplore) leads the reader gently through the basic concepts of spatial vectors, contrasting them with 3-D vectors, and explains how to implement the recursive Newton-Euler, composite-rigid-body and articulated-body algorithms in Matlab code.

• Robot Dynamics Algorithms (1987).  [DOI].  This is the original book on dynamics algorithms and spatial vectors.  Although it is still worth reading, it has been superceded by the book below.  The treatment of spatial vectors in this book is a little different from the modern treatment.
• Rigid Body Dynamics Algorithms (2008).  [DOI].  This is the new book on dynamics algorithms and spatial vectors.  It is the main reference on these two topics.
• Springer Handbook of Robotics (2008, 2016).  Chapter 2 in the first edition [DOI] and Chapter 3 in the second edition [DOI] (they are almost identical) cover the basics of spatial vector algebra and recursive dynamics algorithms, as well as providing a bit of history and an extensive list of references.
• Robot Dynamics: Equations and Algorithms (2000).  This is a survey paper on robot dynamics.  It contains a brief description of spatial vector algebra and the most important algorithms.
• Plücker Basis Vectors (2006).  This paper discusses Plücker coordinates, Plücker basis vectors and rigid-body acceleration using a mathematical tool called a basis mapping.

• A Short Course on Spatial Vector Algebra.  This is an old introductory course (written in 2008) that takes approximately one or two days, depending on how much you already know.  The materials are intended to be suitable for self study.
  • slides
  • slides (4 per page)
  • notes accompanying the slides
  • questions sheet
  • answers sheet
• A one-hour seminar on spatial vectors which is even older than the short course, but gets to the point very quickly in order to fit into just one hour.
• A 2-body worked example  comparing the solution of a simple rigid-body dynamics problem using 3D vectors with the solution of the same problem using spatial vectors:
  • solution using 3D vectors  (long and complicated), and
  • solution using spatial vectors  (much shorter and easier).

• Roy's software page