RI 16-735
Robotic Motion Planning Syllabus
Howie Choset

The following course outline is tentative. Time allotted to some topics may be modified during the semester.

Material Outline

Intro
Bug Algorithms
Curve Following
Sensors
Configuration Space for Round Mobile Robot
Potential Functions
Graph Search
Configuration Space for non-Round Robots
Roadmaps
Coverage
Sample-based Methods
Kalman Filtering (for Localization, SLAM)
Bayesian Techniques (for Localization, SLAM)
Dynamics and Non-holonomic Constraints, if time permits

Outline
Week	Day	Topics	Assignments	Paper reading
Week 1 8/27 - 8/29	Mon	Intro, Book Review, Course Overview, Assignment Explanation, Path, Start-Goal Mapping, Coverage, Completeness, Line of Sight, Some Notations	Chap 1, App A, B HW 1	Survey on students' interests
Week 1 8/27 - 8/29	Wed	Bug Algorithms	Chap 2, App D HW 2	Howie assigns group
Week 2 9/3 - 9/5	Mon	Labor Day - NO CLASS
Week 2 9/3 - 9/5	Wed	Bug2 Algorithm, Evian Sonar Model, Wall Following controller	Chap 2, App D.	Students select papers
Week 3 9/10 - 9/12	Mon	An Intuitive Introduction to Configuration Space (extra: an application of Minkowski sum)	Chap 3 Cpsace Generator
Week 3 9/10 - 9/12	Wed	Potential Functions: Att/Rep, Dist, Gradient Descent, Wavefront Planner	Chap 4 HW 3
Week 4 9/17 - 9/19	Mon	Potential Functions: Navigation Functions, Pot. fun in Non Euc. spaces	Chap 4
Week 4 9/17 - 9/19	Wed	Numerical Potential Field Technique (random motion technique)	Chap 4	Potential function paper
Week 5 9/24 - 9/26	Mon	A* and D*	App H HW 4
Week 5 9/24 - 9/26	Wed	D* and D*Lite	App H
Week 6 10/1 - 10/3	Mon	Discussion of DD*Lite	App H	D*lite paper
Week 6 10/1 - 10/3	Wed	Finish DD*Lite discussion, Return to Configuration Space	Chap 3
Week 7 10/8 - 10/10	Mon	Project proposal(2-page slides) Roadmaps: Visibility Graph, Begin Retracts	Chap 5 HW 5
Week 7 10/8 - 10/10	Wed	Roadmaps: Incremental Construction of Retracts and higher dimensions	Chap 5
Week 8 10/15 - 10/17	Mon	Roadmaps: Topological Maps, Piecewise Retracts and Silhouette Methods	Chap 5
Week 8 10/15 - 10/17	Wed	Cell Decompositions: Trapezoidal Decomposition	HW 6
Week 9 10/22 - 10/24	Mon	Show and Tell (Project progress report due)	Chap 6
Week 9 10/22 - 10/24	Wed	Show and Tell, Finish Cell Decomp and coverage	Chap 6
Week 10 10/29 - 10/31 (IROS)	Mon	Sample-Based Methods: PRM's	Chap 6 Chap 7
Week 10 10/29 - 10/31 (IROS)	Wed	Analysis of PRM's	Chap 7
Week 11 11/5 - 11/7	Mon	RRT's	Chap 7 HW 7
Week 11 11/5 - 11/7	Wed	RRT using a dynamic vehicle model, Probabilistic primer		"Map for dynamic vehicles" paper
Week 12 11/12 - 11/14	Mon	Controls Primer, Kalman Filtering	App I, J
Week 12 11/12 - 11/14	Wed	Mini version of Show-Tell	Chap 8
Week 13 11/19 - 11/21	Mon	Finish Kalman Filtering (and some SLAM)		Sampling based or Kalman filter
Week 13 11/19 - 11/21	Wed	Thanksgiving Holiday -- NO CLASS
Week 14 11/26 - 11/28	Mon	Bayesian SLAM	Chap 9
Week 14 11/26 - 11/28	Wed	Finish Probabilistic Methods	Chap 9	Bayesian framework
Week 15 12/3 - 12/5	Mon	Discussion
Week 15 12/3 - 12/5	Wed	Using EM to learn 3D models	--	Map/Coverage
Week 16 12/10- 12/12	Mon	Project Presentations
Week 16 12/10- 12/12	Wed	No Class

Last Updated December 7, 2007