This course addresses the problem of controlling physical systems that operate in dynamic, unpredictable environments. Students will, in pairs, build their own mobile robots, and program them to perform a variety of simple tasks. The lectures cover basic hardware including gear trains and robot construction, interfacing with sensors and motors, basic open- and closed-loop control, robot programming languages, and architectures for building perception and control systems for intelligent robots. Students will be required to keep a notebook recording both successful robots and failures and translating their ideas and insights into basic principles and design strategies.
The syllabus is available from the official course web pages.
| [Baum, 2000] | Baum, D., Dave Baum's Definitive Guide to Lego Mindstorms, Apress, 2000. |
| [Baum et al., 2000] | Baum, D., Gasperi, M., Hempel, R., Villa, L.Extreme Mindstorms: An Advanced Guide to Lego Mindstorms, Apress, 2000. |
| [Bonasso and Dean, 1997] | Bonasso, P., Dean, T., "Retrospective of the AAAI Robot Competitions", AI Magazine, Volume 18 (1), 1997. (PDF) |
| [Braitenberg, 1998] | Braitenberg, V., Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology, MIT Press, 1998. |
| [Brooks, 1986] | Brooks, R.A., "A robust layered control system for a mobile robot", IEEE Journal of Robotics and Automation, Volume 2(1), 1986. |
| [Dean and Wellman, 1991] | Dean, T., Wellman, M., Planning and Control, Morgan and Kaufmann, 1991. |
| [Dean et al., 1995] | Dean, T., Allen, J., Aloimonos, Y., Artificial Intelligence: Theory and Practice, Addison-Wesley, 1995. |
| [Jones and Flynn, 1993] | Jones, J.L., Flynn, A.M., Mobile Robots: Inspiration to Implementation, A K Peters, 1993. |
| [Knudsen, 1999] | Knudsen, J.B., The Unofficial Guide to Lego Mindstorms Robots, O'Reilly, 1999. |
| [Kortenkamp et al., 1999] | Kortenkamp, D., Bonasso P., Murphy, R., Artificial Intelligence and Mobile Robots, MIT Press, 1999. |
| [Martin, 2001] | Martin, F., Robotic Explorations: A Hands-On Introduction to Engineering, Prentice-Hall, 2001. |
| [Murphy, 2000] | Murphy R., An Introduction to AI Robotics (Intelligent Robotics and Autonomous Agents), MIT Press, 2000. |
| [VanDoren, 1998] | V.J. VanDoren, "Tuning Fundamentals: Basics of Proportional-Integral-Derivative Control", Control Engineering, March, 1998. |
