Communications

[2020-09-02]

Information regarding the exams of September 2020:

• The default option is to held the exam in the classroom; however, the student can choose to participate to the exam remotely (via Internet); this option needs to be indicated in the “Notes” field in the reserved area. For whom already registered and who did not specified the option, he/she can send me an email at tullio.facchinetti@unipv.it .
• The exam will be delivered using the online platform Kiro, both in the classroom and remotely; this is the link to the exam platform.
• The guidelines for the exam are linked in the Kiro page of the course, which can be accessed through this page.

[2020-06-22]

• The guidelines for the exams of June/July 2020 are available here.
• The fundamental starting point for the exam is the Kiro platform for exams.

General information

The course on Robotics will be held by Prof. Tullio Facchinetti.

I recommend to carefully read the information reported in this page.

Weekly schedule

• Tue 11-13 (Room E8)
• Wed 11-13 (Room E3)

To request a meeting, and for any other issue, please send me an email.

Since I held/hold many different courses, I kindly ask to specify in the email the following information: name, course name, identification number, and - possibly - the year when the course was attended.

The schedule of the lessons of Prof. Howard Li is the following:

• Tuesday 2019 November, 12 at 11-13 - Room E8
• Tuesday 2019 November, 12 at 14-16 - Room Magenta
• Wednesday 2019 November, 13 at 09-11 - Room E2
• Wednesday 2019 November, 13 at 11-13 - Room E3
• Thursday 2019 November, 14 at 09-11 - Room Magenta
• Friday 2019 November, 15 at 09-11 - Room E8

Organization of the exam

The exam consists of a written test regarding the topics covered during the course. The duration of the test is 2 hours. The slides linked in this page contain all the material that is necessary for preparing the exam.

Further information regarding the exam:

1. The topics of the seminars from Prof. Howard Li will be subject of open questions or exercises at the exam.
2. The slides on sensors that are available online cover some topics that will not be explained during the lessons. These topics WILL NOT BE subject of questions or exercises at the exam.

Slides

The didactic material is based on the slides shown during lessons. Additional material may be made available during the course.

ATTENTION: since slight changes to the slides are possible, it is recommended to periodically check this site for updates. The date indicated for each presentation represents the latest update of the corresponding file.

Introduction

• [18/10/2016] Introduction : historical origins of robotics; overview of a robotics system; hardware and software components of a robot;

Robot navigation

• [30/12/2018] Robot navigation : introduction; bugs algorithms: Bug 1, Bug 2, Tangent Bug; potential fields method;
• [30/12/2018] Map-based robot navigation : roadmaps; basics about graphs; visibility maps; grid-occupancy maps; wave-front algorithm; A* algorithm; probabilistic planners; Voronoi maps; cell decomposition maps;

Finite State Machines

• [13/11/2018] Finite State Machines : introduction; Mealy and Moore FSM; formal model; composition of state machines; hybrid systems; examples.

Real-time systems

• [01/10/2019] Introduction : definitions; examples; terminology, definitions and notation; taxonomy;
• [15/01/2019] Classical algorithms : First-Come First-Served (FCFS), Shortest Job First (SJF), Round-Robin (RR), Earliest Due Date (EDD), Earliest Deadline First (EDF), optimality of EDF, non-preemptive scheduling.
• [01/10/2019] Periodic tasks : task model, Rate Monotonic (RM), Earliest Deadline First (EDF), Deadline Monotonic (DM).
• [15/11/2016] Aperiodic tasks : task model, background scheduling, Polling Server (PS), Sporadic Server (SS), Total Bandwidth Server (TBS), TBS*, Constant bandwidth Server (CBS).
• [01/10/2019] Shared resources : critical sections, Priority Inheritance Protocol (PIP).

Sensors

• [05/11/2019] Measures : measurements, errors, propagation of errors, sources of errors.
• [05/11/2019] Introduction to sensors : type of sensors, characteristics of intelligent sensors.
• [08/01/2018] Sensors - part 1 : linear and angular position sensors; resistive (potentiometers and strain gauges), capacitive, inductive and optical (encoders) technologies; Gray code; gyroscopes; proximity sensors; ultrasonic sensors; touchscreen; GPS; trilateration and multilateration.
• [09/01/2019] Sensors - part 2 : pressure sensors; accelerometers; force sensors and cantilevers; load cell.
• [09/01/2019] Sensors - part 3 : flow sensors (Venturi and Pitot tubes); temperature sensors: thermocoupled resistive thermometers, thermistors; current sensors.
• [13/12/2016] Image sensors : relevance of image processing; CCD and CMOS sensors; efficient image processing algorithm.
• [14/12/2016] Time sensors : oscillators: equivalent circuit, clock, clock drift, parameters and properties, distributed synchronization; Network Time Protocol (NTP).
• [17/01/2014] Errors and compensation : types of errors; compensation techniques; polynomial functions; Look Up Table; Wheatstone bridge.

Additional references

• A very good and detailed description of the A* algorithm can be found at the Amit’s A* Pages.
• A useful algorithm to construct a grid map from the obstacle edges is the Bresenham’s algorithm.
• A great page from Professor Howard Li reporting a number of links to videos, institutions, projects, software and more about robotics.

Suggested books

The following text books are helpful to expand the topics covered in the course.

• John Brignell, Neil White, “Intelligent Sensor System”, Institute of Physics Publishing, Bristol and Philadelphia, 1996. ISBN 0-7503-0389-1.
• Paulo Verissimo, Luis Rodriguez, “Distributed Systems for System Architects”, Kluwer Academis Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0-7923-7266-2.
• Giorgio C. Buttazzo, “Hard Real-time Computing System” Second Edition, Springer, 2005. ISBN 0-387-23137-4.
• Howie Choset, Kevin M. Lynch, Seth Hutchinson, George Kantor, Wolfram Burgard, Lydia E. Kavraki, Sebastian Thrun, “Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations”, The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachussets, 2005. ISN 0-262-03327-5.
• John R. Taylor, “An Introduction to Error Analysis: The Study of Uncertainties in Physical Measurements”, University Science Books, 1997.
• Edward A. Lee and Sanjit A. Seshia, Introduction to Embedded Systems, A Cyber-Physical Systems Approach, ISBN 978-0-557-70857-4, 2011.