Detailed Info

Website & Other Information Channels

The course website will be on Canvas. All course materials will be shared through the Canvas website, including important class announcements from the Teaching Staff. All assignments should be submitted via Gradescope. If you have a question, to get a response from the teaching staff quickly we strongly encourage you to post it to the class Piazza. This is a great place to ask questions of the staff, as well as share information among your peers. For private matters, please make a private note visible only to the course instructors. For longer discussions with TAs and to get help in person, we strongly encourage you to come to office hours. To strengthen the background knowledge of students on essential math and physics concepts used throughout the class, we have several review sessions throughout the quarter that we strongly encourage students to attend.

Class Structure

Prelecture Content

This quarter, the class will be structured differently than in past quarters. In-class, we will focus on interactive examples to illustrate the key concepts of the class. This requires that the students come to each lecture prepared for the content that will be discussed. Thus we are assigning the lectures from a previous year that the course was taught as pre-lecture videos to be viewed before each of the main lectures. Additionally, specific course reader sections pertaining to the material will be assigned as supplemental material. A full list of the assigned pre-lecture videos and readings can be found on Canvas (to be uploaded very soon). Please come to lecture prepared.

Lecture Format

Lecture will be broken down into three primary components:

• Content Summary and Q&A (10-15 mins): The important topics covered by the pre-lecture videos and readings will be briefly summarized. This is also a good time to ask questions about anything that was confusing.
• Interactive Examples (45-50 mins): The instructors will lead the class through a series of interactive examples that help build knowledge and familiarity with the key concepts. Students will be prompted to figure out how to tackle each step of the example, and their ideas and approaches will be discussed by the class. Active participation in the examples is highly encouraged.
• Robotics Topic Discussion (15-20 mins): Each week, a different high-level topic related to robotics will be discussed in an open forum among the instructors and students. These topics will not be directly related to the technical content of the course, but instead to different sub-areas of robotics, current trends in research and industry, or any other areas which are of interest to the students.

Assignments

Homework

There will be 6 homework problem sets that are partially pen & paper and coding exercises. Their purpose is to practice the concepts covered in class by applying them to different problems and visualize them in the robot simulation. The coding assignments will generally require to program in python. We provide a coding harness to test the implementation using the simulator/visualizer used in class. All assignments will be submitted to Gradescope by 11:59pm on the due date. Sign up for the course using entry code 9J8VZ7. Code will be graded using the Gradescope autograder.

Collaboration Policy

Although group discussion and work is encouraged, each student should submit their own assignment and perform any necessary calculations on their own.

Exams

There will be both midterm and final exams for this course, held in-class. They are open book and open notes. Electronic devices are not allowed. They will include similar problems to those you have encountered in the homework, and will additionally include problems and questions covering the content from the lectures. TA review sessions will help you to prepare for the exams.

Grading

Homework: 36%
Midterm (in class): 25%
Final (in class): 39%
Extra Credit: Lecture Participation

You will be awarded up to 2% extra credit for both in-class participation and Piazza participation (answering other students' questions in a substantial and helpful way). SCPD students and students with class time conflicts can earn in-class participation credit by creating a private Piazza post visible to only the instructors and asking a question or comment on the lecture's problem session for each lecture.

Late Policy

Each student will have a total of two free late (calendar) days to use for homeworks. Once these late days are exhausted, any assignments turned in late will be penalized 20% per late day. However, no assignment will be accepted more than three days after its due date. Each 24 hours or part thereof that a homework is late uses up one full late day.

Regrading

Regrades will also be handled through Gradescope. We will begin to accept regrades for an assignment the day after grades are released for a window of three days. We will not accept regrades for an assignment outside of that window. Regrades are intended to remedy grading errors, so regrade requests must discuss why you believe your answer is correct in light of the deduction you received. We do not accept regrade requests of the form "I deserve more points for this" or "that deduction is too harsh".

Textbook

The Course Reader is available at the bookstore.

Supplementary Material

• Textbook: Robotics - Modelling, Planning and Control by Siciliano, B., Sciavicco, L., Villani, L., Oriolo, G. Available on Springer within Stanford network.
• Essence of Linear Algebra by 3blue1brown
• Python tutorial

Students with Documented Disabilities

Students who may need an academic accommodation based on the impact of a disability must initiate the request with the Office of Accessible Education (OAE). Professional staff will evaluate the request with required documentation, recommend reasonable accommodations, and prepare an Accommodation Letter for faculty dated in the current quarter in which the request is made. Students should contact the OAE as soon as possible since timely notice is needed to coordinate accommodations. The OAE is located at 563 Salvatierra Walk (phone: 723-1066, URL: http://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/oae).

SCPD Accommodations

SCPD students who cannot physically attend lecture can still participate and ask questions through the Canvas Course Videos tab. This tab will show a 40-second delayed livestream of the lecture, and the associated text chat will be monitored by a TA. The Course Videos tab also contains recordings of past lectures and out-of-class review sessions.

This quarter, the Monday 7:00PM-9:00PM Office Hours has been designated as the SCPD priority office hours. The TA administering these office hours will be available through the Zoom video conference platform for live discussion of course material and homework. SCPD students will receive priority during this time, but non-SCPD students are also welcome to attend.

For Exam Monitor/Proctoring, please visit this page and designate an Exam Monitor by the second week of class to ensure that you can properly send and recieve your exams.

The Stanford University Fundamental Standard is a part of this course.

It is Stanford’s statement on student behavioral expectations articulated by Stanford’s first President David Starr Jordan in 1896. It is agreed to by every student who enrolls at Stanford. The Fundamental Standard states: Students at Stanford are expected to show both within and without the university such respect for order, morality, personal honor and the rights of others as is demanded of good citizens. Failure to do this will be sufficient cause for removal from the university.

The Stanford University Honor Code is a part of this course.

It is Stanford’s statement on academic integrity first written by Stanford students in 1921. It articulates university expectations of students and faculty in establishing and maintaining the highest standards in academic work. It is agreed to by every student who enrolls and by every instructor who accepts appointment at Stanford.
The Honor Code states:

• The Honor Code is an undertaking of the students, individually and collectively
• that they will not give or receive aid in examinations; that they will not give or receive unpermitted aid in class work, in the preparation of reports, or in any other work that is to be used by the instructor as the basis of grading;
• that they will do their share and take an active part in seeing to it that others as well as themselves uphold the spirit and letter of the Honor Code.
• The faculty on its part manifests its confidence in the honor of its students by refraining from proctoring examinations and from taking unusual and unreasonable precautions to prevent the forms of dishonesty mentioned above. The faculty will also avoid, as far as practicable, academic procedures that create temptations to violate the Honor Code.
• While the faculty alone has the right and obligation to set academic requirements, the students and faculty will work together to establish optimal conditions for honorable academic work.