Instructor: Jeff Trinkle
Course Description: This course is a general introduction to robotics, covering fundamental concepts for executing spatial tasks. Topics include homogeneous transformations and coordinate systems, forward and inverse kinematics, Jacobians, path planning, obstacle avoidance, and robot control architectures. Many of these topics will be applicable to other fields requiring spatial intelligence. The coursework should provide a foundation for continuing work in such fields as computer graphics and animation, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, as well as robotics.
Prerequisites: Junior classification, Math 251, or approval of instructor. Note that the course catalog indicates CPCS 320 as the prerequisite, but the catalog is being modified to agree with the prerequisites listed here.
Project: The major project of the semester will be to build a small, autonomous, mobile robot, such as those shown in the pictures. Following the spirit of the popular MIT 6.270 Lego Robot Design Competition, students will be grouped into teams and provided robot kits. Each kit consists of a microcontroller board (the handy-board), (the Rice Roboboard), batteries, motors, sensors, and legos. The project will provide plenty of hands-on experience, to build a robot of your own design.