Syllabus

Course Description

With the rapid advances in technology, computational methods are used increasingly to understand and interact with the physical world. Many of these challenging problems require understanding the geometric relationships among physical objects:

• What can robots do to avoid running into people walking around?

• How can the motion of digital movie actors be synthesized automatically?

• How many maneuvers does it take to park a car in a tight spot?

• How do molecules change shapes over time to perform vital biological functions? 

This course presents a coherent computational framework for addressing this type of questions. The foundation of the framework and the state-of-the-art algorithms are illustrated in the context of several important applications, including robotics, computational biology, and computer animation. The course covers both classic results and, selectively, advances from recent research.

This course will benefit students who work in the above mentioned and related areas and who may come from different backgrounds (computer science, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, etc.). It provides tools for solving a class of practical and challenging geometric problems. Students will do a course project of their choice to gain working knowledge of the topics covered. There will be no exams!

Prerequisites

The course is self-contained. However, students are expected to have basic knowledge in  algorithms, linear algebra, probability theory, and sufficient programming experiences. Prior knowledge in computational geometry and computer graphics are helpful, but not essential.

Textbook

There is no required textbook for this course. Two reference books have been placed in the RBR section of Science Library to supplement the lecture slides.

1. Robot Motion Planning. J.C. Latombe. Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991.
2. Principles of Robot Motion : Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations. H. Choset, K. M. Lynch, S. Hutchinson, G. Kantor, W. Burgard, L. E. Kavraki, and S. Thrun. MIT Press, 2005. 

Grading