Teaching Motion Planning Concepts to Undergraduate Students

M. Moll, I. A. Sucan, J. Bordeaux, and L. E. Kavraki, “Teaching Motion Planning Concepts to Undergraduate Students,” in IEEE Workshop on Advanced Robotics and its Social Impacts, 2011.

Abstract

Motion planning is a central problem in robotics. Although it is an engaging topic for undergraduate students, it is difficult to teach, and as a result, the material is often only covered at an abstract level. Deep learning could be achieved by having students implement and test different algorithms. However, there is usually no time within a single class to have students completely implement several motion planning algorithms as they require the development of many lower-level data structures. We present an ongoing project to develop a teaching module for robotic motion planning centered around an integrated software environment. The module can be taught early in the undergraduate curriculum, after students have taken an introductory programming class.

Publisher: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ARSO.2011.6301976

PDF preprint: http://kavrakilab.org/publications/moll-sucan2011teaching-motion-planning.pdf