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 jphanna@cs and pstone@cs letting us know your CS account.

Join the class discussion group (see class main page).

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

Week 0 (8/30): 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/ or at http://www.cs.utexas.edu/~larg/bwi_web/

Week 1 (9/4): Vision basics

Jump to the resources page.

Readings: (email response due Monday, 5pm)

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.
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
Vision Fast and Precise Black and White Ball Detection for RoboCup Soccer.
Jacob Menashe, Josh Kelle, Katie Genter, Josiah Hanna, Elad Liebman, Sanmit Narvekar, Ruohan Zhang, and Peter Stone
In RoboCup-2017: Robot Soccer World Cup XXI, 2017

Optional but may help with Assignmnet 2:

The UT Austin Villa 2004 RoboCup Four-Legged Team: Coming of Age
See Sections 3.3, 3.4
For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Programming: (due Friday, 9/7 at 11:59:59pm)

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

Week 2 (9/11): Introduction to motion control

Jump to the resources page.

Readings: (Email Response Due Monday At 5pm)

Ben Kuipers' control tutorial.
(If Section 11 doesn't help your intuition, you can skim it)

Braitenberg, 1984.

Programming: (due Wednesday, 9/19 at 11:59:59pm)

Programming assignment 2

Week 3 (9/18): Walking

Jump to the resources page.

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

The University of New South Wales RoboCup 2014 Team Report
Sections 3.1 and 5 except for 5.4 (You should skim 3.2, 4, and 5.4)
Design and Optimization of an Omnidirectional Humanoid Walk: A Winning Approach at the RoboCup 2011 3D Simulation Competition
MacAlpine, Barrett, Urieli, Vu, and Stone
AAAI 2012.
Grounded Action Transformation for Robot Learning in Simulation
Hanna and Stone
AAAI 2017.

Programming: (due Wednesday, 9/19 11:59:59pm)

Programming assignment 2.

Week 4 (9/25): Probability/Sensing

Jump to the resources page.

Readings: (email response due Monday, 5pm)

Chapter 2 of Probabilistic Robotics.

Programming: (due Wednesday, 10/3 at 11:59:59pm)

Programming assignment 3.

Week 5 (10/2): Kalman Filters

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Readings: (email response due Monday, 5pm)

Chapter 1 of Peter Maybeck's "Stochastic models, estimation, and control", Maybeck, 1979.
Sections 3.1, 3.2.1-3.2.3, 3.3.1-3.3.3, and 3.3.5 of Probabilistic Robotics.
Optional (recommend at least skimming)
- Sections 3.4-3.6 of Probabilistic Robotics.
- "An Introduction to the Kalman Filter", Welch and Bishop, 1995. (emphasizes the importance of tuning the filter - especially in the example at the end)

Programming: (due Wednesday, 10/3 at 11:59:59pm)

Programming assignment 3.

Week 6 (10/9): Localization

Jump to the resources page.

Readings: (email response due Monday, 5pm)

Sections 1.1-1.3 of Probabilistic Robotics.
Chapter 4 of Probabilistic Robotics, with particular focus on Section 4.3. You can skim Section 4.1.3.
Sections 7-7.3 of Probabilistic Robotics.
Section 8.3 of Probabilistic Robotics. You can skim Sections 8.3.6 and 8.3.7.
For additional (optional) readings, see the resources page.

Programming: (due Wednesday, 10/10 at 11:59:59pm)

Programming assignment 4 .

Week 7 (10/16): Action and Sensor Modeling

Jump to the resources page.

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

Programming: (due Wednesday, 10/17 at 11:59:59pm)

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 & Josiah Hanna with subject: "Project proposal".

Week 8 (10/23): Path Planning

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Readings: (email response due Monday, 5pm)

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 Wednesday, 10/24 at 11:59:59pm)

Programming assignment 5 .

Week 9 (10/30): Behavior Architectures

Jump to the resources page.

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

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

Structured Control for Autonomous Robots.
Reid Simmons.
IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, 10:1, pp. 34-43, February 1994.

Programming: (due Thursday, 11/1 at 9:00am)

Programming assignment 6 .

Week 10 (11/6): Robot Learning

Jump to the resources page.

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

Reinforcement learning in robotics: A survey
Kober, Bagnell, and Peters, 2013
Focus on sections: 1.3, 2 (if unfamiliar with RL), 3 (challenges), 7 (case study), 8 (open questions)
Optional: 4-6 (making RL tractable)
Learning Contact-Rich Manipulation Skills with Guided Policy Search
Levine, Wagener, and Pieter Abbeel, 2015

Programming: (due Wednesday, 11/14 at 11:59:59pm)

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

Week 11 (11/13): Applications

Jump to the resources page.

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

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.
This is a long article. More important than the details is the full scope of subproblems that arose, and how they were addressed.

Optional (the UT Austin team's approach)

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

BWIBots: A platform for bridging the gap between AI and human--robot interaction research .
Piyush Khandelwal, Shiqi Zhang, Jivko Sinapov, Matteo Leonetti, Jesse Thomason, Fangkai Yang, Ilaria Gori, Maxwell Svetlik, Priyanka Khante, Vladimir Lifschitz, J. K. Aggarwal, Raymond Mooney, and Peter Stone.
International Journal of Robotics Research, 2017.

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

Programming: (due Wednesday, 11/14 at 11:59:59pm)

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

Week 12 (11/20): Social Implications

Jump to the resources page.

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

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.

Week 13 (11/27): Multi-Robot Coordination

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

Distributed Intelligence: Overview of the Field and its Application in Multi-Robot Systems.
Lynne E. Parker.
Journal of Physical Agents, March 2008.

Optimization and Coordinated Autonomy in Mobile Fulfillment Systems.
John J. Enright and Peter R. Wurman.
AAAI Automated Action Planning for Autonomous Mobile Robots workshop, 2011.

Optional (a predecessor to that paper)

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

Lifelong Multi-Agent Path Finding for Online Pickup and Delivery Tasks.
Hang Ma, Jiaoyang Li, T. K. Satish Kumar, Sven Koenig.
International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS), 2017

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

Week 14 (12/4): Project Demos

Jump to the resources page.

Programming: (due Wednesday, 12/12 at 11:59:59pm; and Thursday 12/13 at 9am)

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

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