This syllabus is an active document. Please be aware that course schedule will change throughout the semester; you should review the schedule weekly.
This seminar will explore the topic of adaptive robotics with a focus on developmental robotics, a newly emerging paradigm of research. The goal of developmental robotics is to create intelligent robots by allowing them to go through a developmental process, rather than being directly programmed to solve a particular task. By endowing a robot with an appropriate initial control architecture and adaptive mechanisms, it can learn through interactions with the world, developing self-organized knowledge about itself and its environment. We will be studying the following sorts of questions: What should be innate in the robot? What adaptive mechanisms are needed? What motivates the robot to act?
Read all of the papers for the week prior to class on Tuesday. Bring a typed summary of the papers with you to class on Tuesday. You will turn this in at the end of class on Tuesday. I will write comments on it and return it to you at the start of class on Thursday.
For each paper include the following:
WEEK | DAY | ANNOUNCEMENTS | TOPIC & READING | LAB |
1 | Jan 21 | Introduction and Neural computation
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pyrobot overview Lab 1: Neural network brains for robots |
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Jan 23 | ||||
Jan 28 | Evolutionary robotics
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Lab 2: Evolving neural network brains for robots | ||
Jan 30 | Drop/Add ends (Jan 31) | |||
Feb 04 | Novelty search
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Lab 3: Novelty search | ||
Feb 06 | ||||
Feb 11 | Developmental robotics
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Lab 4: Scribbler robot | ||
Feb 13 | ||||
Feb 18 | Intrinsic motivation
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Midterm project | ||
Feb 20 | ||||
Feb 25 | Unsupervised learning
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CheckPoint Presentations on midterm project | ||
Feb 27 | ||||
Mar 04 | Imitation learning
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Finish midterm project | ||
Mar 06 | Midterm project due at 3pm (Mar 07) | |||
Mar 11 |
Spring Break |
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Mar 13 |
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Mar 18 | Reinforcement learning
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Lab 5: The Horde | ||
Mar 20 | ||||
Mar 25 | Developmental encodings
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Lab 6: Compositional pattern producing networks | ||
Mar 27 | Last day to declare CR/NC or W (Mar 28) | |||
Apr 01 | Papers selected by students
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Final project | ||
Apr 03 | ||||
Apr 08 | Papers selected by students
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Work on final project | ||
Apr 10 | ||||
Apr 15 | Checkpoint presentations | |||
Apr 17 | ||||
Apr 22 | Papers selected by students
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Apr 24 | ||||
Apr 29 | Presentations |
Presentations | ||
May 01 | Final project due at 3pm (May 09) |