Organization of the Course

A course in motion planning and control is to be held at the Department of Automatic Control, Lund University during the fall semester 2017. The course is open for all Ph.D. students as well as senior undergraduate students. The course will cover both fundamental algorithms and state-of-the-art methods for motion planning and control. Depending on the interests of the participants, more focus could also be put on fundamental planning in general. A significant part of the course will be dedicated to implementation of a number of selected algorithms and subsequent applications on small examples. The course relates to research within several ongoing projects, such as WASP, ELLIIT, and SARAFun.

Meetings

In the course, there will be approximately one meeting per week. For each meeting in the course, one participant will be assigned in advance to prepare a short lecture (approximately 30 minutes) based on the reading material that has been studied by all course participants during that week. The assigned participant is also expected to, together with the course responsible, lead a joint discussion in the group on the material after the lecture. During this discussion, both the algorithms themselves and other related aspects that have appeared when implementing them are covered.

Exercises

In connection with each meeting, two hand-in assignments will be requested. The assignments should be submitted to the course responsible prior to each course occasion, since the exercises will be discussed during the meeting. No written reports are required for the hand-in assignments, but the implementation code and scripts with comments should be submitted. The participant should also be prepared to present and discuss the solutions in class.

Structure

The course will be divided into two parts. The first part will cover fundamentals of motion planning and will give 6 hp. The second part will focus on more advanced aspects of motion planning and control, and will also comprise a project part where the participant performs a slightly larger theoretical or experimental evaluation of a selected method, preferably related to the research field of the participant. The project could, for instance, be based on the Open Motion Planning Library (OMPL) or the Robot Operating System (ROS). The second part of the course will give 3 hp.

Course Plan

The first meeting is intended to be held in the first week of September 2017 (w. 35). The aim is to have the
final meeting of the course (combined with a project seminar) in w. 49, but the schedule will be adapted to the course participants and other courses running in parallel during the fall.

Schedule – Part I

Time Content Literature Assignments   Responsible Room
Aug. 30, 13-15 Introduction to Motion Planning and Control Chapters 1-2 in LaValle [Link]   Björn Olofsson M:1172
Sep. 6, 13-15 Fundamental Concepts in Motion Planning Chapters 3-4 in LaValle [Link]   Martin Morin M:1172
Sep. 13, 13-15 Sampling-Based Methods in Motion Planning Chapter 5 in LaValle and articles [Link]   Karl Berntorp and Björn Olofsson M:1172
Sep. 19, 13-15 Combinatorial Motion Planning Chapter 6 in LaValle [Link]   Martin Karlsson M:1172
Sep. 27, 13-15 Additional Topics in Motion Planning Chapter 7 in LaValle [Link]   Marcus Greiff M:1172
Oct. 3, 13-15 Introduction to Motion Planning and Feedback Control Chapter 8 in LaValle [Link]   Gabriel Ingesson M:1172

 

Schedule – Part II

Time Content Literature Assignments   Responsible Room
Oct. 11, 13-15 Sampling-Based and Optimization-Based Motion Planning with Differential Constraints Chapters 13-14 in LaValle and articles [Link]   Karl Berntorp and Björn Olofsson M:1172
Oct. 17, 13-15 Additional Topics in Motion Planning and Control Chapter 15 in LaValle and articles. [Link]   Christian Rosdahl M:1172
Oct. 25, 13-15 Reinforcement Learning for Motion Planning and Control [Reading (Levine et al. 2016)], [Suggested video seminar by Levine]
Intro to RL: [Slides], [Video lecture]
[Link]   Fredrik Bagge M:1172
Dec. 13, 09.30-12.00 Project Presentations and Discussions - -   Björn Olofsson M:2112B

 

Literature

The first part of the course will be based on Chapters 1–8 in the book: 

The book is available for free download at the homepage of the author:

The second part of the course will be based on Chapters 14–15 in the same book. Throughout the course, the material in the book will be complemented with additional articles and book chapters, such that state-of-the-art within this rapidly developing field is covered.

Articles

Projects

The projects are to be presented at a seminar on December 13, 9.30–12.00 in the seminar room M:2112 of Dept. Automatic Control. Each project is presented for 20 minutes (including questions from the audience). After the seminar, a written report is also to be submitted to the course responsible. 

Teaching Staff

Responsible for the course is Björn Olofsson (bjorn.olofsson@control.lth.se) at the Department of Automatic Control, Lund University. Guest lectures will be given by Karl Berntorp about his research on motion planning and control at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL). Possibly also other guest lecturers will be invited during the course.

Examination

In order to receive course credits, the participant is required to: