Important news

• The 25/26 AMR lectures will only be available in presence (no streaming, no recordings).
  

• Students that in 25/26 will be enrolled in the 2nd year of their master should ask to join the AMR Google Group as soon as possible. Use your Sapienza student account (@studenti.uniroma1.it) and enter ONLY your first + last name in "Display Name" and ONLY your master program code (i.e., "MARR", "MCER", "Erasmus"...) in "Reason for joining". Please refrain from asking to join if you will not be enrolled in the 2nd year in 25/26.
  

Audience

This 6-credit course can be taken by students of the Master Programs in "Artificial Intelligence and Robotics" and in "Control Engineering" of Sapienza University of Rome.

Objective

The course presents the basic planning/control methods for achieving mobility and autonomy in mobile robots.

Preliminary syllabus for 2025/2026

• Introduction: Applications, Problems, Architectures (slides, videos not included)
• Configuration space (blackboard)
• Wheeled Mobile Robots: Mechanics of mobile robots (slides)
• Wheeled Mobile Robots: Nonholonomic constraints and kinematic models of mobile robots (blackboard)
• Wheeled Mobile Robots: Path and trajectory planning (blackboard with the addition of companion slides)
• Wheeled Mobile Robots: Motion control - Introduction and Trajectory tracking (slides)
• Wheeled Mobile Robots: Motion control - Regulation (slides)
• Wheeled Mobile Robots: Mobile manipulators (slides)
  
• Perception: Sensors for mobile robots (slides)
• Localization: Odometric localization (slides)
• Localization: Kalman Filter (slides)
• Localization: Landmark-based and SLAM (slides)
• Motion Planning: Introduction and roadmap methods (slides)
• Motion Planning: Probabilistic methods (slides)
• Motion Planning: Artificial potential fields (slides)
• Humanoid Robots: Introduction (slides)
• Humanoid Robots: Architectures and whole-body control (slides)
• Humanoid Robots: Gait generation (slides)
• Humanoid Locomotion: A demonstration (slides)
• An introduction to V-REP with applications to motion planning (slides)
• ROS tutorial: Posture regulation with TIAGo (slides)

Textbooks

- Siciliano, Villani, Oriolo, De Luca, Foundation of Robotics, Springer, 2025
[chapters 1, 2, 4, 7 and 9 cover lectures on Configuration space, Wheeled Mobile Robots, Localization, Motion Planning]

Miscellaneous Material

- Lectures from previous years:
    * An introduction to the NAO humanoid (slides)
    * Motion planning in practice: An introduction to Kite and V-REP (slides)
    * Case study: Vision-based localization and navigation for humanoid robots (slides)
    * Case study: Whole-body motion planning for humanoid robots (slides)
    * Case study: Real-time evasive motions for humanoid robots (slides)
    * Case study: Collision in human-robot collaboration: Avoidance, detection, and reaction (slides)
    * Case study: Visual servoing for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (slides)

- A control brush-up:
    * a review of stability theory
    * basics of stabilization via feedback

- How to read a research paper (written for RPI's students but good for everyone)

Grading       

Students who are enrolled in the 2nd year can pass the exam via midterm test (50%) + final project (50%); or midterm test (50%) + final test (50%). Otherwise, one must take take a conventional exam, which may be written and/or oral.