KON 414E - Principles of Robot Autonomy

Course Objectives

1. Gain a fundamental knowledge of the “autonomy stack” behind self-driving cars, drones, and mobile autonomous robots in general;
2. Be able to apply such knowledge in applications and research work by using ROS;
3. Devise novel methods and algorithms for robot autonomy.

Course Description

This course will cover basic principles for endowing mobile autonomous robots with perception, planning, and decision-making capabilities. The course contains of algorithmic approaches for robot perception, localization, and simultaneous localization and mapping, control of non-linear systems, learning-based control, and robot motion planning; introduction to methodologies for reasoning under uncertainty, e.g., (partially observable) Markov decision processes. During the course, Robot Operating System (ROS) will extensively be used for demonstrations and hands-on activities.