Announcements

Upcoming Deadlines

Welcome to Control of

Recent Discussions

Mobile Robots

Next level of this course?

We are delighted to launch Control of Mobile Robots a course that focuses on the application of modern
control theory to the problem of making robots move
around in safe and effective ways. The structure of
this class is somewhat unusual since it involves many
moving parts - to do robotics right, one has to go from
basic theory all the way to an actual robot moving
around in the real world, which is the challenge we
have set out to address through the different pieces
in the course:
1. Lectures - here Magnus Egerstedt will discuss
modern control theory as it applies to robotics. They
will at times be rather math-heavy but this is due to
the fact that control theory is by its very nature
mathematical, yet remarkably applicable.
2. Homework - pass/fail in this course will be based on
the weekly homework assignments. To pass the
course, 60% is required and to pass it with distinction,
90% is required. Two attempts are allowed per
homework and we encourage you to visits the course
forums frequently to get some guidance. To help map
from lectures to homework, Smriti Chopra and Amy
LaViers have recorded "Glue Lectures" that serve as
a "glue" between lectures and homework.
3. Programming & Simulations - to implement the
course material in simulation, we are making our own
robot simulator, that we use in class at Georgia Tech
as well as for our research at the GRITS Lab,
available. The simulator runs on MATLAB, which is
available to all students for the duration of this
course. Instructions for accessing MATLAB (and any
other information regarding the programming
assignments) is available under the Programming
Assignments tab. Jean-Pierre de la Croix will be
providing weekly programming & simulation videos,
and support for automatic grading of the assignments
is also provided. Note that this part of the course is
optional and does not contribute to the pass/fail
grade. It is to be thought of as a service to make the

Last post by Dmitri Kharlamov (5 hours

ago)

My QuickBot on a pic!
Last post by Pasi O (9 hours ago)

PA7 : Implementation of FSM

Last post by Khimya Khetarpal (9 hours
ago)

PA7 problems
Last post by Khimya Khetarpal (11 hours
ago)

Error when using $IR?

keyboardControl command
Last post by Christian Grant (11 hours
ago)

Browse all discussions

experience richer.
4. Robots - Finally, we struggled quite a bit with how
to structure a course that would benefit significantly
from actual hardware. Our solution is to provide
weekly hardware videos - lead by Rowland O'Flaherty
- that shows how to build your own robot and then
deploy the control code you have developed on the
simulator. We tried to keep the prices as low as
possible for the hardware pieces, and information
about how this aspect of the course is available at the
Hardware wiki (https://class.coursera.org/conrob002/wiki/Hardware). This part of the course is also
entirely optional.
Finally, a few words about the mechanics of the
course. We will release the material for week N on
Friday afternoon of week N-1. The homework
assignments must be finished by the end of week N+1
for week N, which gives a total of two weeks to work
on the homework.
Make sure to check the wikis, the forums, and the
announcements to stay up-to-date with the course.
We hope you enjoy the experience!
Magnus Egerstedt (on behalf of the Control of Mobile
Robots Team)

Sun 19 Jan 2014 10:05 PM PET