COMP 590

Introduction to Robotics

Fall 2008

Instructor

Henry Fuchs 216 Brooks Building, 962-1911

(fuchs “at” cs.unc.edu)

Note: The Brooks Building is an extension on the south end of Sitterson Hall.

Teaching Assistants

Chris Barefoot (chrisb87 “at” email.unc.edu)

Class Times (Room 115 Sitterson Hall)

The scheduled class times are Monday and Wednesday 11:00 am–12:15 pm. Monday will, for the most part, be reserved for lecture and Wednesday will be used for lab. Robotics kits and laptops are required for Wednesday Lab and optional for class on Monday unless otherwise requested.

Goals

1. To learn general robotics topics in a lecture setting once a week.

2. To apply and explore those topics discussed in lecture in a lab session once a week.

3. Topics will include maze learning algorithms, shortest path optimization, introductions to kinematics, dynamics, speech recognition, image processing, computer vision, and human-machine interaction.

Presentations

During the second half of the semester students will be required to choose a topic related to robotics to present to the class. Their topic should be thoroughly researched in advance and an outline should be submitted to the professor for approval shortly after topics are chosen. Students will also be required to construct and program a robot

Grading

Your grade in this class will be based up your class participation, lab completion, lab reports, presentation, and final project.

Honor Code

The Honor Code is in effect in this class as in all others at the University. I am committed to treating Honor Code violations seriously and urge all students to become familiar with its terms.

I encourage you all to help one another in this class. Some have not had any previous programming experience, others have. You will be rewarded for helping your classmates. I will survey the class near the end of the semester asking each of you to name the members of the class who were most helpful to you. The helpful people will get extra credit.

So, how can you help or be helped without violating the honor code? First, do not copy or allow others to copy programs or assignments; each person's work should be his/her own. But one person can explain to another how they solved a particular problem. Second, give credit where it is due. If you discover a solution on the web, include the URL. If someone in the class shows you how to solve a problem, say so. A statement like Joe Goodguy helped me on this assignment by showing me how to ... will be sufficient. When in doubt, mention it in your lab report.