This course will introduce students to the main foundational concepts and techniques in robotics, including perception, cognition, and action. Concepts will be grounded in a range of real-world robotic systems to highlight common robotics components such as sensor selection, sensor processing, fusion, path-planning algorithms, mechanical design, reasoning about environmental interactions, and systems integration. The calls will discuss applications of robotics along with methods for mapping application requirements to design choices for robotics systems. The class will introduce students to ethical issues surrounding robotics, including considerations around potential future uses of robotics technologies. The course will contain programming and written assignments designed to give students a feel for the practical aspects of robot sensing, planning, and actuation.
| Topic Area | Lecture No | Topic |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Course Overview: what is a robot, robot system components, required skills | |
| Sense | 2 | Sensing overview: sensors used in robotics (encoders, GPS, inertial, ranging, tactile, acoustic) |
| 3 | Vision sensors: cameras, RGB+depth, and LIDAR | |
| 4 | Sensor processing: detection, localization, mapping, fusion | |
| Plan | 5 | Planning overview: formulation, representations, examples |
| 6 | Planning as graph search: navigation as a graph, maze solving, simple graph search techniques | |
| 7 | Closing the loop: interleaving planning/execution, reactive planning, policies | |
| Act | 8 | Action overview: actuators used in robotics, spactial representations |
| 9 | Mechanisms: joints, linkages, power transmission, mechanism models | |
| 10 | Interactions: forceful interactions, human robot interaction (HRI) | |
| Applications | 11 | Examples part 1: self-driving cars, space exploration, health care, agriculture |
| 12 | Examples part 2 and wrap-up: search and rescue, infrastructure inspection, active research areas, educational pathways at CMU | |
| 13 | Lab visits: visit robotics research labs at CMU |
Note: the last lecture (#14) is reserved for an in-class exam. If the mini has 13 lectures, we will skip one of the application lectures.
The class has 3 problem sets (60%), in-class 10-minute quizzes (20%), and an in-class exam (20%).