UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS College of Information and Computer Sciences
CMPSCI 403	Foundations of Robotics	Fall 2020
	Rod Grupen

Date	Lecture	Content	Assignment
8/24	Logistics	course organization, overview, computing environment	OSX/Linux/ - X windows reading: Programming Exercises           Sections 1, 2, 3
8/26	Roger-the-Crab Simulator	unpacking Roger-the-Crab, implementing basic motor units, informal introduction to PD control	assignment #0: set-up your VM, install your copy of the simulator
8/28	history of robotics	ancient roboticists, influence on human culture, state of the art, robotic models for animal systems, future prospects	reading: Chapter 2 - Actuators assignment #1: due Friday 9/4     written - exercises 1, 3, 6, 7
8/31	Actuators	muscle, muscle performance
9/2	Actuators (cont.)	DC motors, Lorentz force, Faraday's law, commutation, backward electro-motive force, DC motor performance	reading: Chapter 3 - Control                 Appendix A.10.3
9/4	Practicum: Closed-Loop Control	discussion: the first programming project	Quiz #1 - Chapter 2 assignment #2: due Monday 9/14     written - 1, 4, 5, 7c, 8a, 8d     program - 4.1.1 (Eye Control)                       4.1.2 (Arm Control)
9/7	9/7 ADD/DROP DEADLINE Introduction to Control Theory	open-loop, closed-loop, negative feedback, the spring-mass-damper, free-body diagram, 2nd-order equation of motion, the Proportional-Derivative (PD) controller, harmonic oscillator, under-, over-, and critically-damped
9/9	Control (cont.)	Lyapunov's direct method, phase portrait, Laplace transform, stability, the root locus, practical advice about tuning gains
9/11	Control (cont.)	time and frequency response, transfer functions, SISO filters, the equilibrium setpoint controller.	reading: Chapter 4 - Kinematics                         first half
9/14	Kinematics I	practical knowledge - non-holonomic constraints, the base translate/rotate control design, average_red_pixel(), visual foveation, mechanisms, spatial relationships	Quiz #2 - Chapter 3 assignment #3: due Monday 9/21     Chapter 4 written - 1, 2, 3a, 9     program - 4.1.3 (Base Controller)                         4.3 (Visual Tracker)
9/16	Kinematics II	practical stuff about implementing base translation and rotation controllers and visual tracking controls for Roger, describing mechanisms (links, joints, open-, closed-, series- and parallel-kinematic chains, degrees of freedom, configuration space, spatial tasks
9/18	Kinematics III	translation, rotation (thinking about the direction cosine matrix), indicial notation, inverting the HT, examples
9/21	Kinematics IV	programming project discussion, forward and inverse kinematics	reading: Chapter 4 - Kinematics                         second half assignment #4: due Friday 10/2     Chapter 4 written - 3b, 5, 7     program - 4.2 (Arm Kinematics)                     4.5 (Stereo Triangulation)
9/23	Kinematics IV	inverse kinematics, workspace (reachable, dexterous), Pieper's IK solution, IK of Roger's arm
9/25	Kinematic V	kinematics of stereo triangulation, hand-eye coordination, Jacobian
9/28	Kinematics VI	Jacobian, force and velocity mappings, quadratic forms
9/30	Kinematics VII	quadratic forms, kinematic conditioning, kinematic amplification and precision, forensic anthropology, stereo localizability
10/2	Review Notes	Midterm I review	Quiz #3 - Chapter 4
10/5		class cancelled
10/7	Mid-Semester	LAST DAY TO DROP (W OR P/F) Midterm I
10/9	Programming Behavior	programming environment: landscape of attractors, state, actions, more on the behavioral build file	reading: Chapter 6 - Dynamics                 6.1, 6.2 (thru Eqn. 6.3), 6.3,                 Appendix B.4.3 assignment #5: due Friday 10/16     Chap. 6 written - 4.a.i, 4.a.ii, 4.c     program - 4.4 - SearchTrack()
10/12	Dynamics I	Newton's laws (again), conservation of momentum, moment of inertia (finally), Newton-Euler dynamics,
10/14	Dynamics II	the moment of inertia, the inertia tensor, more on the inertial frame, more on Newton-Euler, the computed torque equation
10/16	Dynamics III	computed torque equation, applications: simulation, feedforward compensation, analysis	assignment #6: due Monday 10/28     Chapter 6 written - 2, 5.a.i, 5.a.ii, 5c     program - 4.7 - ChaseTouch()
10/19	Control Basis I	an action architecture: state and dynamics, a landscape of attractors, parameterizing the landscape, funnels, co-articulation	Quiz #4 - Chapter 6 Dynamics
10/21	Control Basis II	action taxonomy, (postural, search, track), a landscape of attractors, examples
10/23	Control Basis III	action taxonomy, (postural, search, track), a landscape of attractors, examples	reading: Planning Algorithms, S. Lavalle                 Sections 1.2, 5.6
10/26		class cancelled
10/28	Introduction to Path Planning	introduction, manufacturing, drug design completeness, c-space representation, obstacle dilation, cellular and simplicial decomposition, 2^n trees, visibility graphs, voronoi diagram	reading: Chapter 10 - Potential Functions                 Section 10.1.1                 Appendix C assignment #7:due Friday 11/6     program: 4.8 - Path Planning                 project8.c starter code
10/30	Path Planning (cont)	potential fields, local minima, navigation functions, intro to harmonic functions, Probabilistic Road Maps (PRM), Rapidly-expanding Random Trees (RRT)
11/2	Path Planning (cont)	harmonic functions, excluding local minima using Laplace's equation, examples in nature, occupancy grids, numerical relaxation algorithms, examples with Roger, discussion of programming project
11/4	Path Planning (cont)	probabilistic roadmaps, sampling, local planning, lazy PRMs, Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT)
11/6	Grasping	the human hand (evolution, kinematics, mechanoreceptors), a grasp taxonomy	Quiz #5 - Path Planning reading:     Chapter 5 - Hands and Grasping     Chapter 7 - Stimuli and Perception                         Section 7.2
11/9	Grasping II	screw systems, mobility analysis, contact types, the grasp Jacobian, examples, form and force closure, solving for grasp forces	assignment #8: due 11/16     Chapter 5 written - 5.4.1, 2, 5, 7
11/11	Grasping III
11/13	Grasping IV
11/16	Programming Autonomous Behavior	what's next in robotics - a survey of research of the Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics, experiments in developmental learning and autonomy
11/18	Review Notes	Midterm II review
11/20		Midterm II - 11:15-12:05
12/14 Midnight		Grades Due