Robot Lab (Spring 2010)

Revision as of 16:55, 27 May 2010

Announcements

• Class will meet weekly, starting March 30th, 2010.

Course Logistics

Prerequisites: Permission of instructor.
Class Time: TR 15:30->17:00
Class Location: TBD
Office Hours: Rob Lass: TR 5-6PM in the CLC; Dr. Regli: By appointment only.
Course Instructor: William C. Regli, Ph.D.
Teaching Assistants: Rob Lass
Instructor Contact: Email regli (at) drexel (DOT) edu (not that this will help keep the spammers away)
Phone 215.895.6827; Office: UC 143

Course Objectives and Outcomes

Design, analysis and implementation of multi-robot systems in simulation Robotic systems will be “virtual” and interact in a synthetic environment. Students will have weekly programming assignments with the Player / Stage / Gazebo environment.

At the end of the course, students will

1. understand the basic concepts of robotics (from a computer-science point of view), including kinematics, dynamics, actuators, controllers, etc;
2. design experiments for robotic platforms;
3. gain experience with biologically-inspired robotics techniques (swarming, biologically inspired design, etc)
4. implement robot control algorithms, both open loop and closed loop
5. Design robot modeling & simulation experiments
6. Develop path planning techniques and Simultaneous Location & Mapping (SLAM) algorithms
7. Work with Robot Teaming and Planning, including flocks, swarms, leader-follower, predator-prey, etc
8. Have an introduction to human-Robot Teaming

Lectures

Texts

Relevant texts and readings:

1. Intelligence without Representation, Rodney Brooks.
2. Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will Change Us (Paperback) by Rodney Brooks, Publisher: Vintage (February 4, 2003); ISBN-10: 037572527X.
3. Introduction to the Kalman Filter from UNC.
4. SLAM for Dummies
5. J.J. Craig. Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control. Prentice Hall; 3rd edition, 2003.
6. Kiyoshi Toko. Biomimetic Sensor Technology. Cambridge University Press, 2000.
7. Karl Williams. Amphibionics: Build Your Own Biologically Inspired Reptilian Robot. McGraw-Hill/TAB Electronics, 2003.
8. David Cook. Robot Building for Beginners. Apress, 2002.
9. What Every Computer Scientist Should Know About Floating-Point Arithmetic

Player/Stage Documentation:

1. How to Use Player / Stage

Grading

The due dates are listed on the week by week breakdown of the course below. When an assignment is due on a particular date, that means the assignment is due at midnight on the date in question.

Please note that May 7th is the last day you may withdraw from the course.

Ways to Fail This Class

To assist students interested in spending the term working toward earning an F in this class, here are some ways to earn your F more quickly: (1) ignore all of the programming assignments by not handing them in or by handing in projects that do not run, in an effort to get partial credit; (2) fail to hand in more than 50% of the homeworks; (3) miss any one exam or obtain less than 25% on all of the exams (does not apply to Robot Lab); (4) falsify any results; (5) mis-represent another's work as your own (i.e., plagiarism) or violate the course Discussion and Collaboration Policy. There will be no warnings.

Discussion and Collaboration Policy

All students should be familiar with the University's policies on academic dishonesty. Any incidents of academic dishonesty will be dealt with harshly, resulting in review by the University Honor Board with the student subject to possible academic suspension or expulsion. While I encourage students to collaborate, all homework, proofs, and code submitted as part of assignments must be the student's own.

Software

This class will be nearly entirely executed in simulation using Play/Stage/Gazebo. Students not comfortable with software development, hacking and programming will find this course difficult, if not impossible. We will not be providing remedial programming or operating systems tutorials in this course. All information needed to execute the assignments is available (or will be made available) on the web, either at the course wiki page or using services like http://lmgtfy.com/.

It is recommended that students use Player / Stage on Ubuntu (or an Ubuntu VM) to use when completing their assignments. The grader will not attempt to recreate the development environment of every student in the class to run their assignments. Students MUST complete the assignments in Java, unless they get permission from Rob to use a different language IN ADVANCE.

Miscellaneous Resources

Wiki page for Winter 2009 Robot Lab: [1]

Wiki page for Winter 2007 Roomba Lab: [2]

Page from Spring 2007 Robotics Lab: [3]

iRobot Create Forums: [4]

Robotics Primer Workbook based around the Create [5]