CS393R: Autonomous Robots -- Assignments

Things to do ASAP (before the first class if possible)

Make sure you have a CS account - if not, apply for one from the CS Dept. immediately (so it will be active by the time the class starts).

Send an email to todd@cs and pstone@cs letting us know your CS account.

Join the class mailing list (see class main page).

Get access to the class textbook (see class main page).

Week 0 (8/27): Class Overview

If you would like to get a jump on the class, consider looking at the following:

The first 2 chapters of the course textbook.

Any of the research projects and papers listed at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~AustinVilla/

Week 1 (9/1, 9/3): Introduction to motion control

Readings: (email response due Monday, 8/31 at 10pm)

Ben Kuipers' Control Tutorial.

Programming: (due Thursday, 9/10 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 1 is designed to get you familiar with the robots.

Week 2 (9/8, 9/10): Motion control continued

Readings: (email response due Monday, 9/7 at 10pm)

Braitenberg, 1984.

The UT Austin Villa 2003 Four-Legged Team, Extended version
The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Computer Sciences, AI Laboratory Tech report UT-AI-TR-03-304.
Read Sections 5.1.1-5.1.3.

A Model-Based Approach to Robot Joint Control
Daniel Stronger and Peter Stone.
In Daniele Nardi, Martin Riedmiller, and Claude Sammut, editors, RoboCup-2004: Robot Soccer World Cup VIII, pp. 297

Programming: (due Thursday, 9/10 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 1 is designed to get you familiar with the robots.

Week 3 (9/15,9/17): Probability/Sensing

Readings: (email response due Monday, 9/14 at 10pm)

Chapter 2 of Probabilistic Robotics.

Programming: (due Thursday, 9/24 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 2.

Week 4 (9/22,9/24): Kalman Filters

Readings: (email response due Monday, 9/26 at 10pm)

Chapter 1 of Peter Maybeck's "Stochastic models, estimation, and control", Maybeck, 1979.
Sections 3.1 and 3.2 of Probabilistic Robotics. (Section 3.2.4 is optional - read it only if you're interested and have the background)
Optional (recommend at least skimming)
- Sections 3.3-3.6 of Probabilistic Robotics.
- "An Introduction to the Kalman Filter", Welch and Bishop, 1995.

Programming: (due Thursday, 9/24 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 2.

Week 5 (9/29,10/1): Localization

Readings: (email response due Monday, 9/28 at 10pm)

Sections 1.1-1.3 of Probabilistic Robotics.
Chapter 4 of Probabilistic Robotics, with particular focus on Section 4.3.
Sections 7-7.3 of Probabilistic Robotics.
Practical Vision-Based Monte Carlo Localization on a Legged Robot.
Mohan Sridharan, Gregory Kuhlmann, and Peter Stone.
In IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, April 2005.
For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Week 6 (10/6,10/8): Walking

Readings: (email response due Monday, 10/5 at 10pm)

Machine Learning for Fast Quadrupedal Locomotion
Nate Kohl and Peter Stone
In The Nineteenth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, pp. 611-616, July 2004.
Zero-Moment Point - Thirty Five Years of Its Life
Vukobratovic, M. and Borovac, B.
International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, Vol.1, No. 1, pp.157-173, 2004.
Biped Walking Pattern Generation by using Preview Control of Zero-Moment Point
Kajita, S., Kanehiro, F., Kaneko, K., Fujiwara, K., Harada, K., Yokoi, K. and Hirukawa, H.
ICRA 2003.

Programming: (due Thursday, 10/8 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 3 .

Week 7 (10/13,10/15): Action and sensor models

Readings: (email response due Monday, 10/12 at 10pm)

Learning and Using Models of Kicking Motions for Legged Robots
Sonia Chernova and Manuela Veloso
In Proceedings of International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA'04), May 2004.
Towards Autonomous Sensor and Actuator Model Induction on a Mobile Robot .
Daniel Stronger and Peter Stone.
Connection Science, 18(2):97-119, 2006.
For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Programming: (due Thursday, 10/15 at 12:30pm)

Final project topic proposal

Once you have determined what you would like to do for your project and with whom you would like to work, send a description of your project as well as your particular goals for it (one per person - not per team). Make sure to include the name(s) of your partner(s). The more detail you provide, the more easily we will be able to provide meaningful feedback.

See the final project page for more details.

Your response should be sent as ASCII text (not encoded in any way) to Peter Stone & Todd Hester with subject: "Project proposal".

Week 8 (10/20,10/22): Vision

Readings: (email response due Monday, 10/19 at 10pm)

Fast and Cheap Color Image Segmentation for Interactive Robots
James Bruce, Tucker Balch and Manuela Veloso.
In IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, IROS 2000. (Jim Bruce's original paper)
The UT Austin Villa 2003 Four-Legged Team, Extended version
The University of Texas at Austin, Department of Computer Sciences, AI Laboratory Tech report UT-AI-TR-03-304.
Read Section 4.4
The UT Austin Villa 2004 RoboCup Four-Legged Team: Coming of Age
Read Sections 3.3, 3.4
Autonomous Color Learning on a Mobile Robot
Mohan Sridharan and Peter Stone
In Proceedings of the Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence, July 2005.
For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Programming: (due Thursday, 10/22 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 4 .

Week 9 (10/27, 10/29): Behavior Architectures

Readings: (email response due Monday, 10/26 at 10pm)

Intelligence without Representation.
Rodney A. Brooks.
Artificial Intelligence 47 (1991), 139-159.
PDF version.

Experiences with an Architecture for Intelligent, Reactive Agents.
R. Peter Bonasso, R. James Firby, Erann Gat, David Kortenkamp, David P. Miller, and Marc G. Slack.
JETAI 9(2/3):237-256, 1997.
slightly abbreviated version from citeseer (in case the above link doesn't work).

Week 10 (11/3,11/5): Behavior

Readings: (email response due Monday, 11/2 at 10pm)

RRT: Rapidly-exploring random trees: Progress and prospects.
Lavalle and Kuffner.

D* lite: Fast Replanning for Navigation in Unknown Terrain.
Koenig and Likhachev

For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Programming: (due Thursday, 11/5 at 12:30pm)

Programming assignment 5.

Week 11 (11/10, 11/12): Multi-Robot Coordination

Readings: (email response due Monday, 11/9 at 10pm)

Current Research in Multi-robot Systems.
Lynne Parker
ALife Robotics, 2003.

Flexible Teamwork in Behavior-Based Robots.
Gal A. Kaminka and Inna Frenkel.
In Proceedings of the Twentieth National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-05) , 2005.

Coordinating Hundreds of Cooperative, Autonomous Vehicles in Warehouses.
Peter R.Wurman, Raffaelo D'Andrea, and Mick Mountz.
AAAI Magazine, 2007.

For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Programming: (due Thursday, 11/12 at 12:30pm)

Final project literature survey. See the final project page for more details.

Week 12 (11/17, 11/19): Applications

Readings: (email response due Monday, 11/16 at 10pm)

Multiagent Interactions in Urban Driving.
Patrick Beeson, Jack O'Quin, Bartley Gillan, Tarun Nimmagadda, Mickey Ristroph, David Li, and Peter Stone.
Journal of Physical Agents, 2(1):15-30 March 2008

Autonomous driving in urban environments: Boss and the Urban Challenge.
The CMU winning entry in the 2007 Urban Challenge.
Journal of Field Robotics Special Issue 2008.

For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Week 13 (11/24): Social Implications

Readings: (email response due Monday, 11/23 at 10pm)

Why the Future Doesn't Need Us by Bill Joy - Wired, 2000. (pdf version)

The Essence of Soccer: Can Robots Play Too?
Peter Stone, Michael Quinlan, and Todd Hester.
To appear in an upcoming book.

Week 14 (12/1, 12/3): Project Demos

Programming: (due Tuesday and Thursday, 12/1 and 12/3 at 12:30pm)

Final project report. See the final project page for more details.

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