Final Project

Each student (possibly with a partner or two) is expected to propose and complete a final project, likely with substantial programming efforts related to robotics. Many topics will be suggested, but students are free to select their own project topic.

Possible projects include but are not limited to an improved implementation of an existing algorithm from a paper or a synthesis of techniques from several papers. The projects are encouraged to have some research content and novelty.

All students are required to document the progress and results (program executables, images, video clips, reports, etc.) of their final projects using html (or other alternative format approved by the instructor). Please inform the instructor your project website location, as soon as you finish setting it up.


Important Deadlines:

  • Sept. 30, 2008 - Meet with the instructor to discuss possible project ideas.
  • Oct. 10, 2008 - Project Proposal
  • Nov. 10, 2008 - Progress Report
  • Dec. 04, 2008 - Final Project Presentation & Demo

  • Schedules for presentations:

  • Project Progress Report
  • Final Project Presentation & Demo

  • List of Some Possible Course Projects:

  • Design of Biologically-Inspired Robots
  • Path Planning for Articulated or Deformable Robots
  • Motion Planning for Reconfigurable Robots
  • 3D Simultaneous Localization and Mapping
  • Application to traffic simulation
  • Multi-robot coordination
  • Crowd Simulations or Planning of Multiple Agents
  • Contact Determination between Deformable Robots
  • Robot Algorithms using Simulation-Level-of-Detail or Multires Techniques
  • Robot Algorithms for Animation, Bioinformatics, Virtual Environments, etc.
  • GPU Accelerated Robot Controller and/or Navigation Algorithms
  • 6-Degree-Of-Freedom Haptic Rendering
  • Haptic Rendering of Textured Surfaces
  • Sinus Surgical Simulator with Force Feedback

  • Each course project will be graded with the following guideline:

  • Project Proposal Presentation (5%)
  • Project Progress Report (10%)
  • Final Project Presentation (10%)
  • Final Project Web Report (10%)
  • Concept Integration from the Course (15%)
  • System Implementation and Demonstration (25%)
  • Originality and Creativity (25%)