What this course is all about

Here's a quick overview of what this course is all about. The parentheticals noting chapters and appendices refer to the textbook used this semester, Fred Martin's "Robotic Explorations: A Hands-On Introduction to Engineering."

A new world of problems and solution methods (Chapter 1)

• Investigating systems that interact with complex, real-world environments:
• cybernetics, ethology, cognitive science, psychology, automatic (feedback) control, real-time embedded systems; W. Grey Walter, Valentino Braitenberg, Harry Nyquist, Seymour Papert, and Norbert Weiner are just a few of the scientists whose work we'll explore

An opportunity for hands-on problem solving (Chapter 2)

• Building systems that perform interesting and often useful tasks:
• engineering, robotics, computer science
• Learning about embedded control systems:
• real-time programming, implementing multi-threaded feedback systems, solving problems in which timing crucially matters

Construction details (Chapters 2 through 4)

• Designing electro mechanical devices:
• practical beams, gear trains, drive and steering mechanisms, manipulators from scoops to grippers, controlling servo motors
• Interfacing with sensors:
• micro switches for touch sensing, optical sensors for passive and active light sensing, rotation sensors for measuring movement, sonar for sensing objects at a distance, the need for calibration

Elements of control (Chapter 5 and miscellaneous handouts)

• Basic feedback control systems:
  • negative feedback, proportional-integral-derivative controllers, bang-bang control, sensor fusion and Kalman filtering
• Architectural considerations:
• real-time control, subsumption, finite state controllers, hierarchical control

Computational models (Appendix A and miscellaneous handouts)

• Concepts and tools for building embedded real-time systems:
• cross compilers, interpreters, byte codes and virtual machines, interrupt handling, communications among processes and among robots and computers, implementing preemptive multi tasking on a micro controller

Administrivia and practical matters

• There are a limited number of robot kits and trained teaching assistants.
• This is a course with broad general appeal but specific technical content.
• We use a biased lottery to select from those students who fill out an application.
• The bias is toward seniors and students we think will get the most out of the class.
• To enroll in this class you must be selected and you must attend class.