CS 980: Robot Algorithms

Professor Wheeler Ruml

In this graduate seminar, we will read research papers and do implementation projects using the CS department's two new mobile robots. These platforms include high-quality laser rangefinders, 7-DOF arms, and RGB-D sensors. Topics will likely include:

but will also reflect the interests of the participants. Projects can be done individually or in teams. The main student deliverables will be brief written responses to the papers each week and a substantial research paper reporting on the project at the end of the semester. Prior exposure to artificial intelligence (eg, CS 730/830) is recommended but not required. Advanced undergraduates in CS and graduate students outside of CS are welcome but should probably check with me before enrolling. This class will not be offered in academic year 2013-2014.

Meeting time and place: In spring 2013, we are currently scheduled to meet in Kingsbury N233, Tuesdays and Thursdays 11:10-12:30pm. I'm happy to adjust this after the first meeting if there's a better time for everyone. Email me if you can't make the first meeting because of a scheduling conflict.

Schedule

soon: partitioned models, HOG (CVPR, 2005), SURF (CVIU, 2008), segmentation, rgbd, task-motion, architecture

Thur May 16, 10am: Final papers (1 hardcopy and an emailed PDF) and videos (preferably mp4) due at Wheeler's office.

Mon May 13, 1:30pm: final paper presentations (20 min talk + 15 min discussion each). Be sure to bring a video of your system working.

Tue May 7, 11am: Discussion of final papers (25 min each). Bring 3 copies of each of your reviews to class.

Thu May 2: Review version of final papers due - bring 4 hardcopies. Here's a link to ICRA format for LaTeX. No other reading due. Wheeler will give a practice talk on task and motion planning.

Tue Apr 30: pictorial structure (IJCV, 2005)

Thur Apr 25: STOMP (ICRA, 2011)

Tues Apr 23: HPN with uncertainty (IJRR, 2013)

Thur Apr 18: status update presentations

Tues Apr 16: Herb 2.0 (Proc IEEE, 2012)

Thur Apr 11: Implementing RRTs and PRMs (ICRA, 2012)

Tues Apr 9: Field D* (JFR, 2007)

Thur Apr 4: Lazy Theta* (AAAI, 2010)

Tues Apr 2: aSyMov (IJRR, 2009)

Thu Mar 28: RTAA* (AAMAS, 2006)

Tues Mar 26: Siegwart et al, Autonomous Mobile Robots (second edition), sections 4.6 and 4.7.

Thur Mar 21: install ROS (warning: this step might take a while), read the ROS Overview on the wiki (starts here) and do some of the tutorials

[Tues Mar 19: no meeting due to snow ]

[ Tues Mar 12 and Thur Mar 14: no meetings due to spring break ]

Thur Mar 7: SyCLoP (IEEE Trans Rob, 2010)

Tues Mar 5: painting (RAS, 2009). Others: paul (2012), aikon (2005), autoportrait (video)

Thur Feb 28: ARA* (NIPS 2003)

Tues Feb 26: suggestive contours (SIGGRAPH 2003)

Thur Feb 21: multipartite RRTs (ICRA, 2007)

Tues Feb 19: SIFT (IJCV, 2004)

Thur Feb 14: SLAM intro: Part I and Part II (IEEE R and A Magazine, 2006)

Tues Feb 12: Kalman filter intro (UNC TR 1995, 2006)

Thur Feb 7: C-FOREST (IEEE Trans. Robotics, in press).

Tue Feb 5: RRT (IJRR, 2001) and RRT* (IJRR, 2011). Don't worry about the mathematical details in the RRT* paper unless you want to.

Thur Jan 31: Hough Transform (Pattern Recognition, 1981). another (worse) copy is here.

Tue Jan 29: Firby (AAAI-97), plus chapters 24 and 25 of Russell and Norvig's AI textbook (3e)

Thu Jan 24: Viola-Jones (IJCV, 2004)

Tue Jan 22: We'll talk about what topics we want to cover and look over the hardware we have to play with. To prepare, you might want to browse around ROS.org and review How to Read a Paper and The Task of the Referee.

Other resources

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