Robotics and autonomous systems

Information

This course is an advanced course in computer science focusing on the broad, inter-disciplinary field of robotics where the students build and program an autonomous robot.

Aim

The goals of the course are to give the students

• knowledge about the basic concepts and technologies in the broad and interdisciplinary field of robotics,
• experience of building and programming an autonomous robot, so that they will
• have a general idea about the possibilities and limitations for robot technology of today,
• be able to implement robots for performing relatively simple and well defined tasks

Syllabus

During the course a small, mobile, autonomous robot for performing certain tasks is built. This work is done as a project. The participants in the course work in groups on the practical implementation of a specific behaviour of this simple robot by integration of simple mechanisms for perception and manipulation of the robot. At the end of the course there is a contest between the robots that the participants have constructed.

The theoretical part of the course deals with fundamental concepts in robotics, kinematics, navigation and digital control. The practical part of the course includes studies of sensors and manipulators, the construction and programming of microcontrollers, and concrete advice on the building project.

Requirements

The requirements for passing the course is to take the exam (individual) and complete the project inclduing a report (in a group of 4 students).

Grading

Your grade is based on the amount of credits that you collect during the course and is very similar to what it has been before in the course. 100 is the maximum number of credits.

These credits are distributed according to

• Exam: max 50 credits
  If you complete Lab0 in time you get 3 extra credits on your exam result
• Project: max 35 credits
  • 20 credits for being able to score a goal unopposed with several initial ball positions no later than during the seeding for the competiion
  • 5 credits if you complete Lab1 in time
  • Up to 10 credits are given based on the performance of the robot in the tournament, the design, level of innovation, etc. The decision for how to discribute these credits are taken by a jury present at the tournament. To be able to include information about the robot that is hard to determine during the tournament the final decision on these credits will be presented to the team with the comments to the report.
  If you still have not managed to show that the robot can score at the competition you lose 5 credits per week from the 20 credits, i.e. after the competition and until May 22 2pm you get 15 credits, before May 29 2pm 10 credits, and so on.
• Project report: max 15 credits
  The report must be handed in no later than 1pm June 15 CET.

Course material

The course book is "Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots" by Roland Siegwart and Illah R. Nourbakhsh" published by the MIT Press.

Lectures notes are also available.

Contact

If you have any questions regarding the course you can contact

• Patric Jensfelt, patric@nada.kth.se , 08-790 6731 (general questions and lectures)
• Anders Dovervik, ado@kth.se (questions about the project)