Robotics

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The following are last minute news you should be aware of ;-)

09/03/2016: Lectures start today!!

Course Aim & Organization

This course will introduce basic concepts and techniques used within the field of autonomous mobile robotics. We analyze the fundamental challenges for autonomous intelligent systems when these move on wheels or legs and present the state of the art solutions currently employed in mobile robots and autonomous vehicles.

Teachers

The course is composed by a blending of lectures and exercises by the course teacher and a teaching assistant.

Course Program

Lectures will provide theoretical background and real world examples. Lectures will be complemented with practical exercises in simulation for all the proposed topics and the students will be guided in developing the algorithms to control an autonomous robot.

Among other topics, we will discuss:

  • Mobile robots kinematics,
  • Sensors and perception,
  • Robot localization and map building,
  • Simultaneour Localization and Mapping (SLAM),
  • Path planning and collision avoidance,
  • Exploration of unknown terrain.

Detailed course schedule

A detailed schedule of the course can be found here; topics are just indicative while days and teachers are correct up to some last minute change (I will notify you by email). Please note that not all days we have lectures!!

Note: Lecture timetable interpretation
* On Wednesdays, in E.G.2, starts at 13:30, ends at 15:15
* On Thursday, in D.1.1, starts at 13:30, ends at 15:15
Date Day Time Room Teacher Topic
09/03/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Course Introduction
10/03/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci Sensors and Actuators (motors)
16/03/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Robot kinematics
17/03/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Gianluca Bardaro Gazebosim and URDF
23/03/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Gianluca Bardaro Differential drive in Gazebo
24/03/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 -- -- No Classes
30/03/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Robot kinematics (cont.)
31/03/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci Robot navigation algorithms
06/04/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Gianluca Bardaro Middleware for robotics and ROS
07/04/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Gianluca Bardaro Control of diff drive in ROS
13/04/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Trajectory planning (graph based)
14/04/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci Trajectory planning (graph Based)
20/04/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Gianluca Bardaro ROS Tools: tf, rviz, map server
21/04/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Gianluca Bardaro Trajectory planning and navigation in ROS
27/04/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Trajectory planning (sample based)
28/04/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci Trajectory planning (sample based)
04/05/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)
05/05/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci SLAM with Lasers and EKF-SLAM
11/05/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci SLAM with Lasers and EKF-SLAM
12/05/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci Particle filters and Monte Carlo Localization
18/05/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Gianluca Bardaro ROS movebase (plus actionlib)
19/05/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Gianluca Bardaro ROS movebase continued
25/05/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Planning complex tasks
26/05/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 D11 Matteo Matteucci Planning in the Blockworld
01/06/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Gianluca Bardaro Planning Domain Definition Language (PDDL)
02/06/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 -- -- No Classes
08/06/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 -- -- No Classes
09/06/2016 Thursday 13:15 - 15:15 -- -- No Classes
15/06/2016 Wednesday 13:15 - 15:15 EG3 Matteo Matteucci Questions and Answers

Course Evaluation

Course evaluation is composed by two parts:

  • A written examination covering the whole program graded up to 27/32
  • A home project in simulation practicing the topics of the course graded up to 5/32

the final score will sum the grade of the written exam and the grade of the home project.

Home Project

In the home project you will use ROS and Gazebo to develop a simple autonomous mobile robot performin a simple task. The project will be presented mid May and you will have until the end of June to complete it.

Teaching Material (the textbook)

Lectures will be based on material from different sources, teachers will provide their slides to students as soon they are available taken from the book.


If you are interested in a more deep treatment of the topics presented by the teachers you can refer to the following books and papers:

Past Exams and Sample Questions

In the 2015/2016 Academic Year the course has changed significantly and the exam format as well. For this edition of the course we do not have past exams to share with you, should expect 2 theoretical questions + 2 practical exercises (on average), no coding exercise in the exams since you will see some coding already in the home project. During the lectures the teachers will suggest possible exercises you might encounter in the exams.

Online Resources

The following are links to online sources which might be useful to complement the material above

  • ROS: the Robot Operating System
  • Gazebo: the Gazebo robot simulator