In the schedule below, assignment due dates are highlighted in yellow. Note that this does not include student presentations. Also, there are complementary readings for students to learn more about topics discussed in class. Note that these readings are optional but encouraged for students that want to understand the material more in depth.

  • Thu. 09/01. Introduction. The Robot Operating System (ROS)

  • Tue. 09/06. Common Sensing Approaches (from Switches to LIDARS) and Behavior Control (State Machines)

  • Thu. 09/08. Behavior Trees & Introduction to Markov Decision Processes (MDPs)
    Video Assignment: Planning recap (Quiz 1 due at 1pm).
    Complementary Readings: [SB 2nd Ed.] Ch. 6

  • Fri. 09/09. No class (Special Assignment)
    Special Assignment: Paper request form is due.

  • Tue. 09/13. Introduction to Reinforcement Learning (RL) & Shutter Demo
    Video Assignment: H. Admoni, “Literature review using Google Scholar” (Quiz 2 due at 1pm).

  • Thu. 09/15. Visual Perception: The Pinhole Camera Model.
    In-Class activity: Brainstorm Term Project Ideas!
    Assignments: Assignment 1 (Intro. to ROS and Visual Perception) is out.
    Complementary Readings: [GBC] Ch. 2 (Linear Algebra), [HZ] Ch. 3.1, 3.2, 6.2

  • Fri. 09/16. No class (Special Assignment)
    Special Assignment: Add your group members for the semester-long project to Canvas.

  • Tue. 09/20. Camera Calibration.
    Complementary Readings: [HZ] Ch. 9, 10

  • Thu. 09/22. Depth Sensing & The tf Library (student presentations)
    Readings: tf: The Transform Library
    Assignments: Project proposal due (at 8pm).

  • Tue. 09/27. Depth Sensing (Continued) & Function Approximation: Feed-Forward Neural Networks (NN) & Recurrent NN
    Video Assignment: Julia Schwarz, “Microsoft HoloLens 2 Demo” (Quiz 3).
    Complementary Readings: [GBC] Ch. 6, 7, 11.

  • Thu. 09/29. Recurrent and Attention Networks (student presentations)
    Readings: Looking to Listen at the Cocktail Party, Attention Is All You Need
    Complementary Readings: [GBC] Ch. 20.

  • Tue. 10/04. Generative and Graph Neural Networks

  • Thu. 10/06. Imitation Learning (IL) & DAgger
    Video Assignment: A. Rahimi, “Let’s take ML from alchemy to electricity” (Quiz 4 due at 1pm)

  • Tue. 10/11. Rishabh Agarwal, Peer Robotics (Invited Talk via Zoom)
    Assignments: Assignment 1 is due. Assignment 2 (Func. Approx., Imitation Learning, Filtering) is out.

  • Thu. 10/13. Recursive State Estimation (part 1, Kalman Filters).
    Video Assignment: Probability recap (Quiz 5 due at 1pm).
    Complementary Readings: [TBF] Sec. 1.2, 1.3. (available in Canvas)

  • Tue. 10/18. Recursive State Estimation (part 2, Particle Filters).
    Complementary Readings: [TBF] Sec. 1.4. (available in Canvas)

  • Thu. 10/20. October Recess

  • Tue. 10/25. Term project updates
    In-Class activity: Term Project Feedback from Peers

  • Thu. 10/27. Differentiable Filters: Inference Machines & Differentiable PF (student presentations)
    Readings: Differentiable Particle Filters

  • Tue. 11/01. Back to Decision-Making: Revisiting RL

  • Thu. 11/03. Ian Abraham. The Challenges of Robotics in the Wild: Dynamic Control and Embedding Curiosity in Motion (Invited Talk)
    Assignments: Assignment 2 is due (at 8pm).

  • Tue. 11/08. Discriminative Particle Filters (student presentations) & Inverse RL
    Assignments: Project milestone due.
    Readings: Discriminative Particle Filter Reinforcement Learning

  • Thu. 11/10. Modeling Humans as Rational Agents (student presentations)
    Video Assignment: Emma Brunskill at the 2019 Human-Centered AI Symposium (Quiz 6 due at 1pm)
    Readings: Reward-Rational (Implicit) Choice

  • Tue. 11/15. Tesca Fitzgerald. Interactive Robot Learning (Invited Talk)

  • Thu. 11/17. More on Interacting with Humans (Student Presentations)
    Readings: Mastering the Game of Go; Learning from Interventions