15-494 Cognitive Robotics
Spring 2009
Course Links:  Main Lectures Labs Homeworks

Tekkotsu Links:   Tutorial Resources Bugs CVS
Reference:

Week 1
Mon 1/12 Lecture: Course intro; Chiara overview; C++ for Java programmers
Videos: XOR demo, Two-Armed Bandit demo, Regis demo, Chiara walking
Read: C++ review
Wed 1/14 Read tutorial sections: Introduction, Documentation, Behaviors, Events
Lecture: Tekkotsu behaviors and events
Fri 1/16 Read: tutorial section on Robot safety
Lab 1: Teleoperation with ControllerGUI; compiling Tekkotsu behaviors
Week 2
Mon 1/19 Martin Luther King Day: no class.
Wed 1/21 Read: tutorial sections on State nodes, Shorthand notation
Lecture: State machine formalism
Fri 1/23 Read: tutorial chapter on The Storyboard Tool
Lab 2: State machines and the Storyboard tool
Week 3
Mon 1/26 Lecture: Tekkotsu vision pipeline; color image segmentation
Read: overview of the Vision Pipeline Read: tutorial section on color image segmentation and EasyTrain
Homework 2: Color segmentation with EasyTrain (due by Friday, 1/30/09)
Wed 1/28 Read: S. Ullman (1984) Visual routines. Cognition 18:97-157.
Lecture: Ullman's visual routines; Sketches in Tekkotsu
Fri 1/30 Read: tutorial sections on VisualRoutinesBehavior, Sketch primitives, Tekkotsu simulator
Lab 3/Homework 3: Tekkotsu simulator; programming with Sketches
Week 4
Mon 2/02 Read: MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science articles on Mental Representation and Imagery
     (both mention Paivio's dual coding theory)
Read: tutorial section on Shape primitives
Lecture: Shape representations
Wed 2/04 Read: How qualitative spatial reasoning can improve strategy game AIs, by Forbus, Mahoney, and Dill.
Lecture: Shape predicates; Tekkotsu's local map builder
Fri 2/06 Lab 4: Map building and visual search
Homework 4: Parsing the tic-tac-toe board
Week 5
Mon 2/09 Lecture: Architectures for robot control
Wed 2/11 Read: tutorial chapter on Postures and Motion Sequences
Lecture: Postures and motion sequences
Videos: standlie.mp4, pan_head.mp4, headwag.mp4, fallover.mp4
Fri 2/13 Lab 5/Homework 5: Motion Sequences
Week 6
Mon 2/16 Lecture: World maps and localization
Wed 2/18 Read: tutorial chapter on Walking
Lecture: Navigating with the Pilot
Fri 2/20 Lab 6: Knock down a soda can
Week 7
Mon 2/23 Lecture: Object recognition
Supplemental: Fred Birchmore's soda can detector
Wed 2/25 Leture: Gestalt perception
Fri 2/27 Lab 7: Gestalt perception exercise
Week 8
Mon 3/02 Read: B. Kuipers (2005) Drinking from the firehose of experience.
Lecture: Consciousness and groundedness
Video demo: the flash lag effect
Wed 3/04 Midterm exam
Fri 3/06
mid-semester break
Week 9
Mon 3/09
Spring Break
Wed 3/11
Spring Break
Fri 3/13
Spring Break
Week 10
Mon 3/16 Read: tutorial section on Motion commands
Read: documentation for MotionManager, MotionCommand, MMAccessor, LedEngine
Lecture: Motion commands and real-time programming
Wed 3/18 Read: tutorial chapter on Forward kinematics
Optional: A gentle introduction to homogenous transformations and robot kinematics, by Jennifer Kay.
Lecture: Body representation and the kinematics engine
Fri 3/20 Lab 8: Kinematics lab
Week 11
Mon 3/23 Lecture: Affordances
Video: AIBO tool use
Optional: Affordances and Design, by Don Norman
Wed 3/25 Lecture: Human-robot interaction
Video: Cythia Breazeal on Nova
More Kismet videos
Fri 3/27 Lab 9: LookingGlass tool
Week 12
Mon 3/30 Lecture: Manipulation and path planning
Wed 4/01 Lecture: Manipulation with friction
Handout: PID Control Simulation - Excel Spreadsheet
Fri 4/03 Lab 10: Manipulation exercise
Week 13
Mon 4/06 Lecture: Robot learning
Wed 4/08 Special lab meeting: project prototyping experiments
Fri 4/10 project clinic
Week 14
Mon 4/13 project clinic
Wed 4/15 project clinic
Fri 4/17
Spring Carnival
Week 15
Mon 4/20 project clinic
Wed 4/22 project clinic
Fri 4/24 project clinic
Week 16
Mon 4/27 Project presentations/critiques
Wed 4/29 Project presentations/critiques
Fri 5/1
Public demo of class projects
Finals Week
Mon, 5/4 Final exam 1:00 pm to 4:00 pm; Wean Hall 5302
Mon 5/11 Final projects due