CS326B – Motion Planning – Organization
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Instructor: Jean-Claude Latombe, S244, Clark Center, Tel: 3-0350, latombe@cs.stanford.edu
Office hours: Tue-Thu at 11-12am in S244, Clark Center.

TA: Serkan Apaydin, S245, Clark Center, apaydin@robotics.stanford.edu
Office hours: ???

Class meetings: We will meet twice a week during the Winter'04 quarter on Tuesdays and Thursdays, at 4:15–5:30pm, in Gates B12. The course is given for 3 units.

The first three classes will introduce the course, describe basic path planning methods for point robots, and present the concept of robot configuration space. These classes will be presented by the instructor/TA.

Subsequent classes will address more advanced topics. In general, the instructor/TA will give the introduction and the conclusion of the class (approximately 15 min) and students will make 2 presentations of 30 min each. Each such presentation will describe the content of a given technical paper. The two technical papers presented in each class will be available in advance (often by downloading them from the class website). Other students should also have read these papers. It is expected that each student's presentation will consist of 20 min of presentation and 10 min question/discussion.

The instructor/TA will present the last two classes.

Assignments: Each student will be expected to do the following work:

• Attend every class and actively participate in class discussion.
• Prepare and give two presentations. The presentations will be in the form of Powerpoint slides, which will be posted on this website.
• Read the two papers listed as "required reading" prior to each class. (The reading of the other papers is optional.) These are the two papers presented in class.
• Complete two homework assignments. Each assignment will consist of problems and questions aimed at helping students to both get a better grasp of the class material and study issues that we will not have enough time to address in class. These assignments will not be primarily aimed at testing student knowledge, but rather at making students think about issues related to motion planning.
• Complete the programming project.

There will be no midterm or final exam.

Slide Preparation: During the first week of the quarter, if you plan to take the course for credit, you must send us an email to sign up for two presentations.

For each presentation, your work will consist of the following:
1. Read and understand the paper that you will present. If you have problems understanding parts of the paper, contact us as early as possible.
2. Prepare a set of Powerpoint slides for an approximately 20-min-long presentation. You should not present the entire paper and go into detail for everything. Instead, select key ideas, concepts, and techniques, and focus on them. Adopt a critical view toward the paper. Try to establish relations with previous presentations. Make sure you do not have too many slides.
3. Email us your slides at least 4 working days before the presentation. We will return suggestions. Modify your slides accordingly.
4. Email the final version of the slides to us no later than noon on the day of the presentation. We will bring a laptop with the slides on it. We will also post the slides on the class website so that the other students will be able to download them later.

The course websites of 2000, 2002, 2003 contain slides prepared by students. You may look at them for inspiration and import figures and images. Of course, you may also try to find additional information from the web.

Grading: Each homework will count for 15% of the total grade, the project for 40%, and in-class participation (attendance, paper presentation, and contribution to discussion) will count for 30%.