CS404
Instructor: Dr. Henry Hexmoor

Spring 2010
Instructor office hours: Tu/Th 2:00-3:00PM

Lecture times: MW 4:00-5:15PM
Teaching Assistant: Mr. Arnab Sinha
Laboratory: TBD

Place: Faner 1222

Join our googlegroup:http://groups.google.com/group/cs404siu-s10


Course Description:

This course is a comprehensive introduction to modern robotics with an emphasis on autonomous mobile robotics. Fundamentals of sensors and actuators as well as algorithms for top level control are discussed. Multi-robotics and human-robot interaction issues are explored. A term project is an integral part of this course. Class lectures will closely track outline of the course textbook. Lectures and exams are theoretical. Class project is hands on, pragmatic and research oriented.

For a more in depth orientation read my orientation. Teaching this broad in one course is challenging and requires compromises along countless spectrums and constraints, read about them in Tradeoff.

Projects:

A- Hardware track:

Students will use a physical robot kit to replicate a recently published work. This will be fully discussed in class.

A hardware option is to participate in robot building activities at the Carbondale Brehm prep school under supervision of Mr. Joe Viscomi. This option will be discussed in class.

1. Develop a mobile robot to navigate building corridors using human provided, visual sensory data. I.e., Human eyes and visual processes are used as remote sensors. This is incorporated in a fancy GUI.

2. A mobile robot can use sonar sensor sampling to sense speeds of people crossing hallways and aviods them.  The robot can build collision envelops as
described in this report.

3. Develop a mobile robot that predicts human crowd motion and avoids them. See Amalia Foka's thesis or short paper at http://www.ics.forth.gr/~foka/fokaIROS02.pdf

B- Software track:

You may use Pyro or write your own code from scratch.

Students will work in groups to replicate a recently published multirobotics research. This will be fully discussed in class.

Human-Robot interaction, e.g., papers at MIT HAL, M. Goodrich's paper, MIT HAL videos. The following is asuggestion. UAVs.

C- Language track

Students design and implement a programming language for autonomous robot control.

Pre-requisites:

CS 330 with a grade of C or better or graduate standing. Seek permission of instructor if you need clarifications. Please Be aware that this is a programming intensive and a hands on course, requiring nontrivial programming skills.

What this course is NOT: a lower division CS course.

Graduate and undergraduate students are welcome.

Objectives:

You are expected to know or learn programming language on your own.

Grading: Term project at 40%, and three exams worth 20% each, class participation and attendance will help determine borderline grades.

Class Project: Each group will perform three presentations: intro (the scope and specification), interim (working simulation, status), and final (completed results). Although you will work in groups, you will submit individual reports. Due to differences in your report, you may get a different grade from your other members of your project team.

Important Dates (Dates will be determined in class and this page is periodically updated)
Week 1 1st wek of classes Introduction, Syllabus, Orientation  
Week 2   Locomotion, architecture, Potential Fields Project proposals are received and ratified
Week 3   Motion Planning, Navigation, Bug AlgorithmsRoadmaps...  
Week 4   Motion Planning, Navigation, Bug Algorithms, Roadmaps...  
week 5

Exam I

(2-17-10)

   
Week 6   Probabilistic-robotics, Filters, Fuzzy logic Navigation, Affect  
Week 7   MDP, POMDP, HMM  
Week 8 Exam II    
Week 9      
Week 10      
Week 11      
week 12      

Recommended textbook:
Howard Choset, et. al. 2005. Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations, The MIT Press, ISBN-10: 0262033275.

Required, Supplemental Reading:
The following links and papers are limited to education purposes by our local students. All rights remain with original sources. This list is updated as needed.

I - Good Old Fashioned Robotics

1. Principles of Robot Locomotion
2. Rodney A. Brooks' original subsumption paper
3. The Subsumption Architecture

4. Henry Hexmoor's High Level Control Loop

5. Potential Fields Tutorial

6. Howard Choset's textbook Chapter 2 slides (Bug Algorithms)

7. Howard Choset's textbook Chapter 5 slides
8. Roadmap slides


II- State of the Art in Robotics

9. Probabilistic-robotics
10. Bayesian Filters for Location Estimation
11. The Scalar Kalman Filter

12. A Fuzzy logic based Navigation System for a Mobile Robot

13. Hexmoor's Fuzzy logic

14. Affect based Computing
15. Robin Murphy's Emotion-based Control
16. Brick and Mortar

17. Markov Decision Processes
18. POMDP FAQ

19. Jong and Stone paper: RL and MDP
20. Hagit Shatkay on HMMs
21. Andrew Moore's HMM Tutorial Slides


III- New Frontiers

22. Coverage and Search
23. Multirobotics

24. Diana Spears' Swarms paper
25. Alife

Reference Sources:

1. S. Thrun, W. Burgard, D. Fox, 2005. Probabilistic Robotics, MIT press

2. S. LaValle, 2006. Planning Algorithms, Cambridge University Press.

3. R. Arkin, 1998. Behavior-Based Robotics, MIT press

4. G. Bekey, 2005. Autonomous Robots, MIT press

5. G. Dudek, 2005. Computational Principles of Mobile Robotics, Cambridge university press

6. Jones, Flynn, 1998. Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation, AK Peters.

Last updated: January February 18, 2010