Fall 2011
From the surface of Mars and the far reaches of our Solar System to the bottom of the ocean, robots are helping us expand our scientific understanding of the universe. In our everyday life, devices that gather information and interact with the environment are ever-present, taking over many of the undesirable or dangerous tasks that humans had to perform previously. Fundamental to all these robotic devises is their ability to sense the environment, reason about it, and then plan and safely execute the best action. This course is designed as an introduction to the generic field of robotics.
Syllabus |
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At the beginning we will discuss how robots move and interact with their environment. Among other topics we will examine the underlying hardware enabling mobility, kinematics and inverse kinematics, and also the differences between manipulators and mobile robotic systems. Perception of the environment is another fundamental skill for intelligent systems. Sensors, sensor data interpretation, and sensor fusion would be presented next, including recent advances in the field of sensor networks. Reasoning about the environment and the actions a robot takes is the third area we would cover in this course. This would include path planning for mobile robots and configuration spaces for manipulators. The task of mapping, with the underpinning concepts of position estimation and localization, will be explored. We will go over the notion of multi-agent systems, and finally look at applications of robotics in the real world. |
The course material would cover the fundamentals of intelligent robotic systems with special focus on the computational aspects. The students would also have the chance to apply some of the theoretical concepts seen in class on a mobile robot (Boebot). The instructor would draw from his experiences in robotic research to enrich the material with aspects of active research problems, such as: multi-robot coverage for humanitarian de-mining; environmental coral reef monitoring using an underwater robot; robotic planetary exploration; etc. Even though the focus of this course is on mobile robotics, the methodologies discussed can be applied to a variety of computer systems equipped with sensor and actuators.
Instructor
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Lecture notes are posted here
Final Exam: 21/12/11 In McConnell 103 9:00-12:00
Midterm in class: 26 Oct. 2011
Assignments
| Description |
code |
worlds |
Due date |
| Assignment 1 | |
28 Sept. 2011 |
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| Assignment 2 | potential_field.cpp |
A2World.tgz |
21 October 2011 |
| Assignment 3 | grid_mapper.zip,A3Real.tgz, |
A3World.tgz |
04 November 2011 |
| Assignment 4 | boebot sample code |
21 November 2011 |
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| Assignment 5 |
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5 December 2011 |