»Hi Tina Maze! Where are you hiding your skis?«. Aha, under the blue cylinder. I already saw it, when I was delivering his hamlet to Peter Prevc. I should return to it; I have to find the right path. It will be better to turn left, because I will arrive at the goal faster, and I will avoid obstacles better. I have to deliver the skies to Tina, and then I’m done for today with my job as a DeliveryBot.

 

Such type of communication and reasoning is needed to solve complex tasks, such as the one described above. We, humans, are very good in performing such types of tasks, however intelligent robots are capable of such behavior as well. Such intelligent agents consist of modules for machine perception (the use of sensors, signal processing, object recognition, image interpretation, localization), as well as modules for control, tactical and strategic reasoning and learning. Similarly as humans, the intelligent robot systems can also perceive the environment, experiment, learn, and apply the acquired knowledge for solving the tasks in the future.

 

The course is very practically oriented with the emphasis on the hands-on experience. The solutions will be implemented and integrated on real robotic platforms using the Robot Operating System, ROS. We will work with mobile robots, which we built from the robot vacuum cleaner iRobot Roomba, the RGBD camera Kinect and other electronic parts. The robots will have to autonomously solve complex tasks, such as the delivery task described above. And of course, to make the development of such robots even more interesting and challenging, the robots developed by the groups of students will compete between themselves in a real robot competition. Let the best robot win!

The main emphasis is on hands-on work by programming the robots in room reserved for these activities during the lab classes and at other times as well. The work should be done during the semester. We set three major milestones for evaluating different functionalities of the developed robot systems. The milestones are typically scheduled in the first week of April, May and June. The evaluation of the developed robotic systems on these milestones replaces the written exam.