Teaching

MW 2:00pm-3:30pm , GAR 0.132

Office Hours: Monday 1:00pm-2:00pm, CSA 1.132 or ENS 32NE

http://z.cs.utexas.edu/wiki/car/traffic11.wiki (login required)

Lectures, Vehicle Tests, Assessments etc

This course is designed explicitly to provide hands-on research experience to undergraduates of all levels who are interested in Computer Science and Robotics. It will be a demanding course requiring a good deal of self-motivation and discipline. But it will also be very rewarding.

The backgrounds and skill sets the students in this class will vary greatly. There are no specific prerequisites other than the ability to write reasonable code and the desire to work hard on a very interesting problem.

Grading will be based on participation in class discussions and effort in the class. Each student is expected to work at the highest level of their abilities.

Registration is by consent of the instructor. Students will be admitted with an aim of having a class that is balanced in terms of having some Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors, as well as some students from outside of CS (most likely engineering).

If you are interested in being enrolled in this course, please contact the instructor describing your interest in the class and giving your UT EID, background, skills, and GPA.

The Spring class focused on the range of activities required of a real-life computer science researcher. Students read papers, amde presentations, and worked on original research projects.

This semester, the class will be run much more like a research lab, focusing on refactoring the vehicle code and beginning a comprehensive technical report that describes every detail of the vehicle hardware and software.

This course presents an opportunity for students to help decide whether they would enjoy going on to graduate school and an eventual career as a computer science researcher. In particular, students will be required to read published research papers, participate in discussions, propose and execute a solution to a challenging open-ended problem, make presentations to the class, and write about their work. Content Overview

The 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge proved that autonomous vehicles are currently technologically feasible. 5 cars navigated more than 100 miles in the Mojave Desert without any human control. However in that case, the cars were given pre-specified routes, and did not need to deal extensively with each other.

The obvious next challenge is getting cars to drive in traffic. Indeed DARPA hosted the 2007 Urban Challenge with exactly that focus. This course began as an attempt to participate in the 2007 Urban challenge. The software written by students of the class for an existing autonomous vehicle placed in the top 20 teams.

The challenge of this particular class will be to recreate the software necessary to support the Urban Challenge behaviors, as well as support future undergraduate and graduate-level research on the vehicle.

The syllabus can be found on the class wiki or blackboard.

There is no textbook.

• Official DARPA Urban Challenge Information. Announcements, the rule, FAQ, sample files, teams.
• Journal article on the UT-Austin/Austin Robot Techonology 2007 Urban Challenge entry
• PBS video: the Great Robot Race. Wonderful coverage of the 2005 Grand Challenge
• Wikipedia entry for grand challenge
• Sebastian Thrun's talk at Google about his team's success story
• Austin Robot Technology

2007 Urban Challenge Teams: list

• Book: Probabilistic Robotics
• Autonomous Intersection Management

Students are expected to be actively involved in class discussions and the collaborative class project throughout the semester. Evaluation will be based heavily on class participation and the final project and written report. Access to the autonomous vehicle will likely be concentrated in the evenings and on weekends off campus. We will help coordinate transportation to test locations, but ultimately students will be responsible for getting there when needing to test code on the vehicle.

You are encouraged to discuss assignments with classmates. But all written work must be your own. And programming assignments must be your own except for 2-person teams on the final project. All work ideas, quotes, and code fragments that originate from elsewhere must be cited according to standard academic practice. Students caught cheating will automatically fail the course. If in doubt, look at the departmental guidelines and/or ask.

The University of Texas at Austin provides upon request appropriate academic accommodations for qualified students with disabilities. To determine if you qualify, please contact the Dean of Students at 471-6529; 471-4641 TTY. If they certify your needs, I will work with you to make appropriate arrangements.

A student who misses an examination, work assignment, or other project due to the observance of a religious holy day will be given an opportunity to complete the work missed within a reasonable time after the absence, provided that he or she has properly notified the instructor. It is the policy of the University of Texas at Austin that the student must notify the instructor at least fourteen days prior to the classes scheduled on dates he or she will be absent to observe a religious holy day. For religious holy days that fall within the first two weeks of the semester, the notice should be given on the first day of the semester. The student will not be penalized for these excused absences, but the instructor may appropriately respond if the student fails to complete satisfactorily the missed assignment or examination within a reasonable time after the excused absence.