Instructor

Christopher Rasmussen

E-mail: cer@cis.udel.edu

Office: Smith 409 

Office hours: Tuesdays, 11:00 am-12:00 pm and Thursdays, 1:30-2:30 pm

Web page

http://vision.cis.udel.edu/mrp

Class will mee on most Tuesdays and Thursdays from 9:30 am to 10:45 am in Smith 341

A number of days will be set aside for "lab time" in 122 E. Delaware Ave.  On these days, there will be no meeting in Smith 341.

Description

We will take a hands-on approach to implementing mobile robot
algorithms in simulation and on a group of small robots. Topics covered will include but are not limited to: low-level motor control and reactive obstacle
avoidance; high-level control including navigation, localization, and
planning; and vision-based sensing for tracking and mapping.

This course is open to grads and undergrads and has no formal
prerequisites. However, it would be helpful to have taken or be taking
concurrently at least one of Artificial Intelligence, Computer Vision,
or Computer Graphics.

Grading and Policies

There is no midterm or final exam.

The paper for your presentation can be chosen by you, but I will have a list to choose from.  Paper presentations should be about 45 minutes long and use visual aids such as transparencies or Powerpoint, etc.  The date that you present will be assigned randomly, but you may swap dates with another student if mutually agreeable.  There will be no presentations during the week preceding a homework due date.

Programming assignments must be turned in by e-mail to me by midnight of the day they are due.  You have 5 "late days" to use throughout the semester if your projects take a little longer.  I will deduct them automatically; if you have no late days left, you will get a 0 for the assignment.

On-robot assignments will require your physical presence in the robot lab for much of the work that you do.  There will be "lab hours" during most days and some evenings; I will post these when I have everyone's schedules.

Students can discuss problems with one another in general terms, but must work independently on programming assignments unless specifically assigned to teams.

References & links

v

Monte Carlo Localization paper

Balancing robots

Line-following robots

Player/Stage/Gazebo robot simulator

TangentBug paper, Ishay Kamon & Ehud Rivlin

Bug algorithm paper, Vladimir Lumelsky & Tim Skewis

Vector field histogram paper (skip section 3), Johann Borenstein & Yoram Koren

Kurt Konolige's gradient control method paper

Tracking, particle filtering lectures

RoboCup home page

OpenCV documentation

Traxxas E-Maxx (robot "base") FAQ, set-up tutorial

Carnegie-Mellon control tutorials

Charles Williams' feedback tutorial

University of Melbourne paper on visual servoing for RoboCup

Hough transform pages: HIPR, Sussex

Fast color segmentation paper, James Bruce, Tucker Balch, & Manuela Veloso

Paul Bourke's RGB<=>HSV color conversion code

Poynton's Color FAQ, which links color space conversions

HIPR page on connected components

Probabilistic roadmaps paper, Kavraki & Latombe

RRT-Connect paper, Kuffner & LaValle

RRT page

Amit Patel's page on path planning for game programming

"Robot Algorithms" (section 3.3), Dan Halperin, Lydia Kavraki, Jean-Claude Latombe

Andrew Moore's robot motion planning slides

Steven LaValle's planning book draft

Presentation paper suggestions

v

"Real-Time, Multi-Perspective Perception for Unmanned Ground Vehicles," A. Stentz et al., AUVSI 2003

"The Gaussian Sampling Strategy for Probabilistic Roadmap Planners", V. Boor, M. Overmars, and A. van der Stappen, ICRA 1999

"Multi-Sensor, High Speed Autonomous Stair Climbing," D. Helmick et al., IROS 2002

"Visual Odometry," D. Nister, O. Naroditsky, and J. Bergen, CVPR 2004

"Centibots: Very Large Scale Integrated Robotic Teams,"  K. Konolige et al.  ISER 2004

"A System for Volumetric Robotic Mapping of Abandoned Mines,"  S. Thrun et al.  ICRA 2002

"Vision-based Perception for an Autonomous Harvester,"  M. Ollis & A. Stentz.  IROS 1997, pp. 1838-1844 [The order of pages is reversed in this PDF file for some reason]

"Vision-based Autonomous Landing of an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle,"  S. Saripalli, J. Montgomery, & G. Sukhatme.  ICRA 2002

"Appearance-Based Place Recognition for Topological Localization,"  I. Ulrich & I. Nourbakhsh.  ICRA 2000 

"Stochastic Road Shape Estimation," B. Southall & C. Taylor, ICCV 2001

"Vision-Guided Flight Stability and Control for Micro Air Vehicles," S. Ettinger, M. Nechyba, P. Ifju, & M. Waszak.  IROS 2002

Feb. 16

Register/Add deadline Feb. 20

Feb. 21

Feb. 23

Finish TangentBug;  control examples line-following and balancing

Bang-bang, proportional, derivative, and integral control; intro. to Player/Stage

Mar. 9

Mar. 30

Tracking: measurement likelihood, dynamics, sampling

Apr. 13

Withdrawal deadline Apr. 17

Apr. 20

Apr. 27

May 2

May 4