Teaching with the book

Video lessons for blended learning

The Robot Academy, launched May 2017, is an online resource with over 200 video lessons available for use in class.  Each lesson has a static URL which you can give in a “reading list”.  The lessons cover a lot of the material in Chapters 1-3, 7-9, 10-15.

Note that the Academy has a number of MATLAB® screencasts and these are for the now-obsolete open-source toolboxes (Robotics Toolbox v9.x, Machine Vision Toolbox v3.x which were used in the first edition of the book).  Tabs underneath such videos include alternative code examples including the MathWorks® Toolboxes used in the third edition.  A longer-term project is to re-narrate these MATLAB®-specific videos.

Checkout the Facebook group as well    

Keynote/Powerpoint slides

I have presentation material that covers, not necessarily completely, chapters 1 and 10-15. Some of my lectures on Machine Vision, chapters 10-14, are available on YouTube

I am happy to share with bone fide teachers/academics.  You are welcome to use the slides as is or mashed up provided you acknowledge me.   You can find the slides in Keynote and Powerpoint format.

Figures

All the figures in the book which are not copyright images can be found here. This includes Python scripts that can recreate all the code-generated figures which can then be saved in whatever format you prefer.

Writing using the book’s notation

The book is typeset using Adobe InDesign not LaTeX, but there is a full set of LaTeX macros that allow you to write documents or presentation slides using the same notation as the book.  You can find this on GitHub.

I use LaTexIt to drop equations formatted using the RVC definitions into Keynote or Powerpoint presentations.

Solutions to example problems

The solutions manual is still not complete which is a bit embarrassing.  For the first edition there are solutions to Chapters 2 through 10 in various stages of polish.  The problems in the second edition are mostly a superset of the first edition.  The problems in the Python version are much the same as the earlier editions, so the solutions here may give some guidance.

I’d be happy to collaborate with people who are interested in bringing this up to date, please contact me.  At the moment it’s all done in LaTeX.

Download: RVC 2nd edition solutions manual (PDF, 941 kB)

Places/people teaching using the book

See the list here.

Other robotics teaching resources

• RoboticsCourseWare.org is a collection of easily-modifiable curricular content, typically in .ppt and .doc formats, and covering the range of primary areas of robotics pedagogy, including robot mechanics, control, motion planning, vision, and localization.
• The IEEE Robotics & Automation society has a collection of resources in various subject areas.
• The Springer Handbook of Robotics  is a comprehensive (and massive) resource covering all theory and applications.  The multimedia extensions available at handbookofrobotics.org provide a rich collection of videos that illustrate theory, practice and history.