Fall 2023: CS 6301 Special Topics in Computer Science: Introduction to Robot Manipulation and Navigation

Course Information

Term: Fall 2023
Class Level: Graduate
Activity Type: Lecture
Days & Times: Monday & Wednesday 4:00 PM – 5:15 PM
Location: HH 2.502

Instructor: Prof. Yu Xiang
Office Location: ECSS 4.702
Office Hours: Monday & Wednesday 2:30PM – 3:30 PM

Teaching Assistant: Jishnu P
Office Hours: Tuesday 1:00PM – 2:00 PM

Syllabus

All the course materials can be found here.

Course Description

Theory and practice of robotics. Provides in-depth overview of robot manipulation and robot navigation, including kinematics, statics, and dynamics of robot manipulators, motion planning, state estimation, environment mapping and robot control.

Textbooks

Kevin M. Lynch and Frank C. Park. Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control. 1st Edition. (PDF)
ISBN-13: 978-1107156302
ISBN-10: 1107156300

Grading Policy

  • Homework (50%)
    • Assignment 1 (10%)
    • Assignment 2 (10%)
    • Assignment 3 (10%)
    • Assignment 4 (10%)
    • Assignment 5 (10%)
  • Team Project (45%)
    • Project proposal (5%)
    • Project mid-term report (10%)
    • Project presentation (15%)
    • Project final report (15%)
  • In-class Activity (5%)

Project

  • Project proposal description (PDF)
  • Project mid-term report requirement (PDF)
  • Project presentation and final report requirement (PDF)

Homework

Lectures

DateTopic
Week 1, 8/21, Lecture 1Introduction to Robotics (slides)
Week 1, 8/23, Lecture 2Configuration Space (slides)
Week 2, 8/28, Lecture 3Task Space, Workspace and Introduction to ROS
Installation of ROS in Docker (slides)
Week 2, 8/30, Lecture 42D Rigid-Body Motions and Rotation Matrices (slides)
Week 3, 9/4Labor Day
Week 3, 9/6, Lecture 5Course Project Description (slides)
Week 4, 9/11, Lecture 6Angular Velocities and Exponential Coordinates of Rotations (slides)
Week 4, 9/13, Lecture 7Matrix Logarithm of Rotations and Homogeneous Transformation Matrices (slides)
Week 5, 9/18, Lecture 8Twists (slides)
Week 5, 9/20, Lecture 9Screw Axes and Exponential Coordinates of Rigid-Body Motions (slides)
Week 6, 9/25, Lecture 10Forward Kinematics and Denavit-Hartenberg Parameters (slides)
Week 6, 9/27, Lecture 11Forward Kinematics and Product of Exponentials Formula (slides)
Week 7, 10/2, Lecture 12Guest Lecture (due to ICCV Traveling): Grasp Planning by Ninad Arun Khargonkar (slides)
Week 7, 10/4, Lecture 13TA Lecture (due to ICCV Traveling): Solutions for HW1 and HW2 by Jishnu P
Week 8, 10/9, Lecture 14Velocity Kinematics (slides)
Week 8, 10/11, Lecture 15Inverse Kinematics (slides)
Week 9, 10/16, Lecture 16Motion Planning: Overview and Foundations (slides)
Week 9, 10/18, Lecture 17Motion Planning: Algorithms (slides)
Week 10, 10/23, Lecture 18Dynamics of a Single Rigid Body (slides)
Week 10, 10/25, Lecture 19Dynamics of a Single Rigid Body and Statics (slides)
Week 11, 10/30, Lecture 20Dynamics of Open Chains (slides)
Week 11, 11/1, Lecture 21Robot Control: Motion Control with Velocities (slides)
Week 12, 11/6, Lecture 22CoRL Traveling
Week 12, 11/8, Lecture 23CoRL Traveling
Week 13, 11/13, Lecture 24Robot Control: Motion Control with Velocities, Forces or Torques (slides)
Week 13, 11/15, Lecture 25Robot Control: Motion Control, Force Control, Impedance Control (slides)
Week 14, 11/20Fall Break
Week 14, 11/22Fall Break
Week 15, 11/27, Lecture 26Solutions for HW3, HW4 and HW5
Week 15, 11/29, Lecture 27IRVL Visit
Week 16, 12/4Project Presentation I
Group 1: Semantic Exploration and Mapping of Unknown Environments for Mobile Robots (slides, demo)
Group 2: GOAT: Autonomous Weed Detection and Removal System (slides, demo)
Group 3: Robotic Arm: Shape-Based Object Recognition and Manipulation (slides, demo)
Group 4: Autonomous Sorting of Trash Objects Based on Structure using Gazebo Robot Simulation (slides, demo)
Group 5: Language Guided Manipulation (slides, demo)
Group 6: Development of a Robotic System for Efficient Item Delivery in Healthcare (slides, demo)
Group 7: Language Guided Manipulation System (slides, demo)
Group 8: MediAssist: Robotic Medication Companion for Elderly Care (slides, demo)
Group 9: Image-Recognition Based Robotic Arm Screw System (slides, demo)
Group 10: RoboServe: An Autonomous Food-Serving Robot with Mobile Manipulation (slides, demo)
Week 16, 12/6Project Presentation II
Group 11: Pitcher This: A ROS-Based Robotic Arm for Autonomous Baseball Picking (slides, demo)
Group 12: GraspBot Navigator (slides, demo)
Group 13: Reinforcement Learning for Targeted 3D Object Top-Down Grasping with Emphasis on Selective Shape Manipulation (slides, demo)
Group 14: The Autonomous Navigator and Object Grasper (slides, demo)
Group 15: Reinforcement Learning for Vision-based Robot Grasping (slides, demo)
Group 16: From Speech to Actions: Speech-based Robot Manipulation and Navigation System using Natural Language Processing (slides, demo)
Group 17: Autonomous Kitchen Assistant: Prototype for Model Based Grasping (slides, demo)
Group 18: Large Language Model Based Virtual Robot Pick-Place Manipulation (slides, demo)
Group 19: Object Selection from Table: A Multimodal Approach Using Text Input (slides, demo)
Group 20: Training Robots for Object Grasping (slides, demo)