Page 442 - Sensing, Intelligence, Motion : How Robots and Humans Move in an Unstructured World

CHAPTER 9

Suggested Course Projects

The projects can start 3–4 weeks into the course—when the students are already
familiar with the problem, notation, and terminology, and can read additional lit-
erature on their own. In this author’s experience, the student would be required to
write an email report once a week, outlying the work done on the project, issues to
be tackled in the next period, and asking questions, if any. The work status would
be also discussed in the regular meetings with the instructor. If the class is too big
for that, other means of following the projects’ progress are needed.
It may happen that in order to proceed with their project, some students may
need the knowledge of material that would be discussed in class somewhat later.
In such cases I would encourage the students to proceed with their reading of the
corresponding material on their own, and would be ready to provide consultation
as needed.
The topics of course projects listed here are given only as examples. Very often,
students themselves try to come up with a topic that is closely related to their
interests, their specialty, their thesis topic, or even another course that they are
presently taking or have recently completed. With most students being already quite
experienced in science and engineering, this author has chosen to make it known
that such connections would be welcome; he has given students much flexibility
in choosing their topics, as long as the project satisfied the expected level of effort
and was closely related to the course’s material. As a result, projects may vary
widely, and the defense of projects at the final exam likely turns into an interesting
mini-lectures series. Not rarely, course projects would have continuations in the
following years (a student may continue the project for another year, or change
his/her PhD topic, or prepare a conference or journal paper, etc.) Once the topic is
chosen and worked on for a little while, changing the topic should be discouraged
because this will not leave sufficient time for work.
One will note that the list of suggested projects below involves topics that, while
related to the material taught in the course, go beyond the specific material studied.
One such example is motion planning for multiple mobile robots. The idea here
is that the course has prepared the student to use the material they have already
learned for more advanced work. A topic like this would encourage the student to
read literature and to apply creatively the ideas and techniques taught in the course
to produce new knowledge. The instructor may want to recommend appropriate
literature in such cases.
Sensing, Intelligence, Motion, by Vladimir J. Lumelsky
Copyright  2006 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
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