Introduction
Robots are everywhere, working quietly behind the scenes in labs and factories, on highways and in the home and now constantly on the front page. It is a rich area of Computer Science Research and at the same time a challenging arena of Applied Computer Science and Engineering. This makes for a very attractive context for learning.
In this course you will gain an understanding of how mobile robots are designed and work, while contributing towards the long term development of the Campus Rover. We will read the seminal papers from the field, and program algorithms on actual robots! You will learn concepts like localization, navigation, SLAM, and of Arduino, ROS, and many more are surveyed and applied to a variety of projects.
In the weekly lectures we will cover fundamentals of robotics, the ROS operating system, and how to write software that runs our robots. But you cannot really learn robotics in a classroom! In the Robotics lab you will get your hands dirty and work individually or with other students, designing, implemnting and testing components of the robot. You will be expected to do learn new packages and solve your own problems and get over obstacles because of the newness of this field. Whether you choose to go deeper into robotics or not, the experiences of learning from failure, and learning how to confront major unknowns will hopfully be important and meaningful.