Welcome to the video supplements for the book Modern Robotics. My name is Kevin Lynch, and my co-author is Frank Park.

We're shooting these videos using the Lightboard, a tool for video creation invented by Professor Michael Peshkin here at Northwestern. In front of me is a pane of glass that I can write on. On the other side of the glass is the camera.

Unless you think I'm left-handed and really good at writing backwards, you've probably guessed that you're seeing the video image after it has been reversed, left-to-right. I'm actually right-handed, and I'm writing so that I can read the text. If this were a chalkboard in a classroom, I would turn around to address the class. With the glass and the video reversal, I can look at you and the board at the same time.

This is an unreversed photograph of Professor Peshkin writing on the Lightboard.

Throughout these videos I will be referring to rotation about an axis according to the right-hand rule. By this rule, positive rotation corresponds to the direction that the fingers of your right hand curl when your thumb points along the axis. To make it look right to you, I'm using my left hand.

Chapter 1 is just an overview of the book, so let's dive right into Chapter 2 on configuration spaces.

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