Thanks to Matt Simon for the logo.

CSCI-4964/6963 Advanced Robotics, Spring 1999

Times: Mon & Wed 10:00 - 10:50, Carnegie 113;
Sec. A, Fri 10:00 - 10:50, Sec. B, Fri 11:00 - 11:50, Carnegie 201

Announcements

• Final project information updated Monday April 19

Current assignment(s)

• Final project presentations as scheduled
• Final project report due 12:01am Monday May 3.  No late reports accepted.

Course information

• Course description
• Revised syllabus
• Handouts online
• Guidelines for reading papers, writing reading reports, and presenting papers
• Final project
• paper presentation signup

Course description

This course will cover topics in robotic manipulation and mobile robotics. It is intended to give the student a broad background in these areas, familiarity with the state of the art, and an understanding of current research areas. The first third of this course will cover manipulation; the last two thirds, mobile robotics.

Robotic manipulation is concerned with how to manipulate objects (to accomplish some task) rather than on how to control a robotic arm. In fact, many applications of robotic manipulation (or the ``mechanics of manipulation'') are in systems that do not have a robotic arm per se. Robotic manipulation, then, is concerned with:

• phenomena governing object motion --- kinematics, dynamics, contact, friction, and impact;
• different modes and strategies for manipulation; and
• creating plans --- sequences of actions on a system that accomplish some goal.

Mobile robotics is the study of robots that move around in the world; consequently, the problems of mobile robotics are quite different than those of manipulation. Our study of mobile robotics will center on:

• understanding the components and design of mobile robots;
• localization and planning --- how a robot knows its location and determines how to move to a goal location; and
• robot architecture --- the internal (software) structure of robots to support high level goals.

Course handouts online

• Course syllabus (postscript)
• Survey (postscript)
• Mason's Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation FTP site

I have handed out copies of the Preface and Chapter 1 of Mechanics of Robotic Manipulation. I will be covering selected sections from other parts of the text (see the revised syllabus for details). For now, the relevant file is whole.ch12.ps which contains the table of contents, Preface, and Chapters 1 and 2. If you are going to print this, you probably want to use a tool such as gv (ghostview) to select the relevant pages.

• Assignment 2 (postscript)
• Assignment 3 (postscript) and data sheet for problem 4
• Sample Reading Reports
• Assignment 4 and related files