Kinematics

Robots move themselves or move objects around them. The former is called sometimes egomotion or locomotion and the later manipulation. Here we start from a general framework of motion algebra and later we plugin specific representations or parameterization of motion, to arrive to an implementation of algorithms that either control the motion itself of estimate the state of the environment based on a motion model.

As you may understand, a self-driving car and a humanoid may require different motion representations and sometimes the choice is specific to the robot or domain (eg. aeronautical industry). We use the motion representations to model:

Kinematics:

Kinematics pertains to the motion of bodies in a robotic mechanism without regard to the forces/torques that cause the motion.

Dynamics:

The dynamic equations of motion provide the relationships between actuation and contact forces acting on robot mechanisms, and the acceleration and motion trajectories that result.

Kinematics & dynamics models embed all the information of the various mechanisms of the robot that includes actuators excerting forces to the links and joints of each mechanism.