This course gives students a hands-on introduction to robot programming covering topics including sensing in real-world environments, sensory-motor control, state estimation, localization, forward/inverse kinematics, vision, and reinforcement learning. This course is centered around 3 mini projects exploring central concepts to robot programming and 1 final project whose topic is chosen by the students. Each of these mini projects involves students programming real, physical robots interacting with the real world. The use of physical robots and real-world environments is essential in order for students to 1) see the result of their programs ‘come to life’ in a physical environment and 2) gain experience facing and overcoming the challenges of programming robots (e.g., sensor noise, edge cases due to environment variability, physical constraints of the robot and environment).

The course websites can be found at the following links: Spring 2024, Fall 2023, Fall 2022, Spring 2022, Spring 2021, Winter 2021

This course exposes students to a broad range of recent and cutting-edge research in HRI. The topics covered in this course include: nonverbal robot behavior, verbal robot behavior, social dynamics, norms & ethics, collaboration & learning, group interactions, applications, and future challenges of HRI. Course meetings involve students in the class leading discussions about cutting-edge peer-reviewed research HRI publications. Throughout the quarter, teams of students in the course also complete an HRI course project of their choosing where they investigate an HRI research question of interest to them.

The course websites can be found at the following links: Winter 2024, Winter 2023, Fall 2021, Fall 2020

This six-week course provides a hands-on introduction to designing and programming robots for high school students who have little to no prior experience programming and little to no prior experience working with robots. Students learn how to build their own ClicBot robot, design its behavior and movements, and program its behavior using Blockly - a block-based visual programming language. In addition to learning how to control and program a robot’s movements, students \also learn how to design their robots to engage directly with people by sensing people’s behavior, expressing emotion, and encouraging input directly from people. The course culminates in a final project where students work in collaborative teams to build and design a robot to help solve a societal problem.

The course website can be found at the following link: Summer 2023