CS189r: Autonomous Multi-Robot Systems

Building autonomous robotic systems requires understanding how to make robots that observe, reason, act and coordinate. Each of these components requires sophisticated engineering principles: for example, how to fuse multiple noisy sensor inputs, how to balance short-term versus long-term goals, how to control one's actions reliably, and how to anticipate the actions of others. Integrating these components into a working system requires other skills, for example understanding principles of modular/reusable design, software engineering, and project management. In this project-based course we will study these questions in the context of a semester-long project. We expect that the project topic will change year to year.

Spring 2011: a.k.a. Can Robots Play Soccer? Link to Course Website     OR     WATCH our class video! In this first offering, we studied these questions in the context of a semester-long project to develop an Autonomous Robot Soccer Team. In the robot soccer competition, two teams of 5 robots compete against each other with rules that closely mimic real soccer. One key focus is the artificial intelligence that allows the team to choose actions and responses to an opponent during the game, without any human intervention. Another key focus is the design of a high-performance real-time hardware-software system. The goal of this course was to get a hands-on experience with the design and execution of a robotics engineering project, that combines CS sophistication with the uncertainty and complexity of hardware operating in the real world. Read more about how the course went on the website!

CS199r, Spring 2009: Special Topics in Computer Science Course Website Prior to cs189, we offered a version of this class in 2009 as a Special Topics class. The theme of the class was autonomous robot soccer, but the focus was on the low-level control for the robots (network, vision, low-level feedback control, etc). We also co-hosted the US Open Small-Size League at Harvard at the Hilles Penthouse, with teams from CMU and Georgia Tech Tech.