Course Syllabus

Jump to Today

CS 7939 / ECE 6868 / ME 6892 Spring 2024 Robotics Seminar

 

Hi all, and welcome to the Spring seminar! I'll first note that this is one of the few classes that all of the Robotics Track students will take. Introduce yourself to someone! You could make a friend for life. 

 

The Robotics Seminar is held each Tuesday from 2pm to 2:50pm in WEB L102.

After each presentation you will be expected to write a one-paragraph summary of the talk, which will be graded on a 3-point scale. A good summary will provide the name of the speaker, a succinct summary of the topic of the talk (one or two sentences), something that you found particularly interesting, and a question you asked or wanted to ask about the talk. This summary is due 11:59pm Tuesday via Canvas.

To pass the class, I also expect everyone to ask at least one question during the semester. If there are lots of awkward silences, I will start grading/tracking this, but hopefully there will be no need. Some questions you can always ask are:

  • What problem are you most excited about solving next in your research?
  • What's one big missing piece to what you've shown us that needs to still be solved but you're stuck on how to solve it?
  • What advice do you have for young robotics students getting started with research?
  • Where would you love to see your research applied in the future?
  • What originally got you excited about this research topic?

You are allowed to miss two seminars/reports without penalty. You are also allowed to attend up to two seminars via Zoom. Please email Professor Brown to get a zoom link if you need to attend virtually.

Below is the tentative schedule for speakers this semester:

Week Date Speaker University
1 1/9 No class
2 1/16 Jesse Thomason USC
3 1/23 Laura Hallock Utah (in-person only)
4 1/30 Tyler Clites UCLA
5 2/6 Vaibhav Unhelkar Rice
6 2/13 Axel Krieger Johns Hopkins (in-person only)
7 2/20 Andrea Bajcsy CMU
8 2/27 TDB
9 3/5 Spring Break
10 3/12 Heather Culbertson USC
11 3/19 Boyuan Chen Duke
12 3/26 TBD
13 4/2 Cammy Peterson BYU
14 4/9 Simone Fani ASU
15 4/16 Andrew Vardy Newfoundland
16 4/23 No Class

----

Your final course grade will NOT be curved. It is theoretically possible for every student to get an A or for every student to get an F. Grades will be based on the following distribution:

≥93%: A

≥83%: B

≥73%: C

≥65%: D

<60%: F

Grey areas between two letter grades (e.g., 90-93% --> A, A-) and +/- grades will be determined based on the following: 1) course attendance, 2) overall course participation, and 3) upward/downward trend in course grades/participation.

Course Summary:

Date Details Due