Syllabus

Schedule

DateTopicImportant Dates
Week 1
Wed, Sep 3

Lecture Introduction to Computational Robotics
Week 2
Mon, Sep 8

Lecture Coordinates and Transformations
Week 2
Wed, Sep 10

Lecture Configuration Space and Workspace

 HW1 issued on Sep 12
Week 3
Mon, Sep 15

Lecture Forward Kinematics
Week 3
Wed, Sep 17

Lecture Inverse Kinematics
Week 4
Mon, Sep 22

Lecture Discrete Search Algorithms

 Project teams formed
Week 4
Wed, Sep 24

Lecture Probabilistic Roadmap (PRM)

 HW1 due (Sep 26 11:59 PM)
Week 5
Mon, Sep 29

Lecture Rapidly-exploring Random Trees (RRT)

 HW2 issued on Sep 28; Project proposal due
Week 6
Wed, Oct 1

Lecture Control: Position Control and Impedance Control
Week 6
Mon, Oct 6

Lecture Control: Position Control and Impedance Control (continued)
Week 7
Wed, Oct 8

Lecture Camera Models: Pinhole Camera and Camera Calibration

 HW2 due (Oct 12 11:59 PM)
Week 8
Mon, Oct 13

Lecture Depth Cameras, LiDAR, Sensors, and SLAM
Week 8
Wed, Oct 15

Midterm Written Exam

 Midterm Exam
Week 9
Mon, Oct 20

Lecture Simulation and Robotics Software
Week 9
Wed, Oct 22

Lecture Supervised Learning for Robotics

 Milestone 1 due
Week 10
Mon, Oct 27

Lecture Convolutional Neural Networks
Week 10
Wed, Oct 29

Lecture Vision Foundation Models

 >HW3 issued on Oct 31
Week 11
Mon, Nov 3		 Academic Holiday
Week 11
Wed, Nov 5

Lecture Model Learning for Robotics
Week 12
Mon, Nov 10

Lecture Model-Based Planning and Trajectory Optimization
Week 12
Wed, Nov 12

Lecture Imitation Learning

 HW3 due (Nov 14 11:59 PM)
Week 13
Mon, Nov 17

Lecture Reinforcement Learning I

 Milestone 2 due
Week 13
Wed, Nov 19

Lecture Reinforcement Learning II
Week 14
Mon, Nov 24

Lecture Large Language Models, Vision-Language Models, and Vision-Language-Action Models
Week 14
Wed, Nov 26		 Academic Holiday
Week 15
Mon, Dec 1

Presentation Project Presentations #1

  • Rana Alaqil, Justin Charney
    VisualGrip: Visual Reinforcement Learning for Object Manipulation
  • Simrin Ponamgi, Elisavet Lydia Alvanaki
    Algorithm-Hardware Co-Design for Real-Time Planning on Low-End Systems
  • Zhengbin Lu, Yihe An, Hongyuan Kang
    Lightweight Pipeline for Long-Horizon Robot Manipulation
  • Edwin Argudo, Ekansh Gupta, Nihal Singh
    Vision-Language-Action Models for General-Purpose Manipulation
  • Minjae Bang, Jingwen Zhang, Jace Li
    Context-Adaptive Manipulation via Chain-of-Thought VLMs and World Models
  • Sanskriti Bansal, Progga Paromita Dutta
    MPC-Driven Motion: Intelligent Robot Navigation with Obstacle Avoidance
  • Rishabh Jain, Rohit Ramesh, Tejal Bedmutha
    Camera Perturbation-Invariant VLA Policies via Learned Canonicalization
  • Alexis Liu, Jinhui Liu, Matthew Beveridge
    Gentle Grasping of Deformable Objects
  • Kaya Celebi, Rajan Subramanian, Nicholas Bykhovsky
    Interactive Dual-Arm Motion Planning Simulator
  • Alena Chan, Siying Ding, Kristina Kobishchanova
    CAR: Computer Shrimp Project
  • Shouqiao Wang, Weiye Xi
    RMFS Simulation Environment and Baseline Evaluation
 Project Presentations
Week 15
Wed, Dec 3

Presentation Project Presentations #2

  • Anthony Chang, Sandy Li, Michael Wang
    Six-Legged Robot
  • Rhythm Syed, Zach Witzel
    VLA: Vision-Language-Action Framework
  • Charles Chen, Tiffany Fu, Saloni Jain
    Language-Understanding Manipulation
  • Jiawei Chen, Eddie Choi
    Biomechanically Accurate Human Reconstruction from Video
  • Wen Ni Chew, Yao Jiang
    Cooperative Pruning for Multimodal Perception Models
  • Hongyu Li, John Wendlandt, Zach Cox
    Autonomous Drone Control and Navigation
  • Alice Lin, Alvis Ou, Godwill Agbehonou
    Ambiguity Resolution with Multimodal Human Cues
  • William Wang, Sunny Qi, John Dong
    Hierarchical Adaptation for In-Hand Manipulation
  • Letong Dai, Chak Li, Julia Dudlak
    Teleoperation
  • Tong Ren, Qianyi Fan
    Obstacle-Aware Imitation Learning from Human Videos
  • David Ge, Christian Cruz Romero, Nelson Wong
    Maze Search
  • Yuqi Zhang, Xinjie Zhang, He-qian Shen
    LIQUIDTWIN: Interactive Liquid Digital Twin from Monocular Video
Week 16
Mon, Dec 8

Presentation Project Presentations #3

  • Hongkun Gong, Peng-Hao Hsu, Yushan Zhang
    Semantic 3D Reconstruction for Robotics
  • Sophia Xia, Nathan Gong, Keigo Nomura
    Efficient Real-Time Path Planning for Tree Pruning
  • Patarada Yontrarak, Kai Zhang, Victoria Gonzalez
    Reinforcement Learning for Foosball
  • Chenhao Hong, Shujun Xia
    StyleTennis: Trajectory-Prompted VLA for Tennis with Style Control
  • Ayesha Khan, Priyanka Rose Varghese, Tanya Mehta
    Vision-Language-Guided Motion Planning for Instruction-Based Navigation
  • Jack Xiong, Daanish Khan, Tony Wang
    SLAM
  • Mikul Saravanan, Samay Lakhani, Jeffrey Kravitz
    Multi-Robot Frontier Exploration via Information-Theoretic Allocation
  • Paul Kröger, Zachary Zusin
    Robust Walking via Reinforcement Learning on a DIY Biped
  • Sanket Makkar, Geonsik Moon, Samuel Lee
    Autonomous Navigation in Simulated Environments
  • Hua Hsuan Liang, Jaisel Singh, Edward Zhang
    Integrating Conditional Flow Matching with Policy Gradients
  • Sanjaii Vijayakumar, Brian Phan
    Language-Guided Complex Robotic Manipulation
  • Chang Ma, Jiayu Zhou
    Contact-Driven Dexterous Grasping via Subtask Decomposition
Final
Dec 15

Due Final Project Report

 Final Report Due