Intelligent Autonomous Robotics

Semester 1 2011/2012

Fourth year honours / Level 10 Official course descriptor

MSc / Level 11 Official course descriptor

Lectures:

Lecturer: Barbara Webb
To contact: bwebb@inf.ed.ac.uk
Office: IF 1.27
Phone: 651 3453

Lecture times: Mondays 9am and Thursdays 9 am, Semester 1, DHT 4.01
Note there is no lecture on the first Monday of the semester. See week one special arrangements.
Lecture topics and handouts

Required reading: Valentino Braitenberg `Vehicles: Experiments in Synthetic Psychology', MIT Press, Cambridge Massachusetts, 1984 (ISBN 0-262-52112-1 paper). Copies are available to borrow from the course lecturer. This is an entertaining and short book, which can be easily read in one evening.

A useful textbook is Seigwart, R. and Nourbakhsh, I.R. `Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots', 2nd edition, MIT Press 2011 (the 1st edition, published 2004 is equally useful for most topics in the course)

For additional background reading, we recommend:
`Behavior-based Robotics' by Ronald C Arkin, MIT press, 1998.
`Probabilistic Robotics' by Sebastian Thrun, Wolfram Burgand and Dieter Fox, MIT Press, 2005.

Further specific references will be given in lecture notes.

Practical Exercises

Note: you need to sign up for practicals and collect your robot kit on Friday 23rd Sept, from 1-2pm, in the robot lab, AT 3.01. Practical sessions start in week 2.

This module is assessed both by examination (50%) and practical write-ups (50%). The practical requires you to build and program a robot using the kits, electronics, sensors and programming environments provided to perform a specified task, and to present the results in a written report. The final report is worth 40% . A further 8% of the coursework marks will be for satisfactory completion of the weekly goals towards this task, demonstrated at the practical session and reported in a brief write-up, and 2% will be for the performance of your robot in the final competition.

Task description and robot information.

Deadlines for UG4 students
Deadlines for MSc students

Location: Robotics Teaching Lab, level 3 Appleton Tower

Times: UG4 Tues 1-3pm ; MSc Thu 3-5pm.

Demonstrators: Georgios Petrou and Vladimir Ivan

Kit Collection: Friday Week 1, 1-2pm, in the robot lab AT 3.01.
You will need 5 pounds per key deposit (normally 2 keys per kit), returnable at the end of semester when you dismantle your robot.

Year guide for fourth year students

Year guide for MSc students

Last update: September 8, 2011.

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