CS 6731, Humanoid Robotics Spring 2019, Prof. Peter Allen

Project Submission Details

Projects: Project Proposals are due in class on 2/26.

Student projects will form 50% of the final grade. You may do team projects, but as the team size grows, so does the amount of work expected. All projects must be approved in advance by Prof. Allen.

Please feel free to discuss the project in advance with Prof Allen or the TA.

Some past project summaries in the class can be found Here

Below are some possible project ideas, but feel free to come up with your own ideas!

• Enter the FetchIt! - The Fetch Robotics Mobile Manipulation Challenge. You can do your project and also win prizes form Fetch!. Rulebook is here and the simulation software is here.
• Find an interesting paper from the Humanoids 2018 conference or IROS 2018 conference (both with searchable/keyword indexing) or other robotics paper. Implement the method/algorithm in the paper on your own system, possibly extending the paper's results.
• Set up a reinforcement learning experiment for a robot.
• Use the PR2/Fetch/Baxter simulator to have a humanoid robot navigate and manipulate objects in a complex world environment. You can then port the code to the actual robot in the lab.
• Write code to perform a sensory task on a humanoid using visual, tactile, force or other sensor inputs.
• Do a study of a human behavior and discuss how this behavior can be ported to a humanoid.
• Write a paper on a topic of interest in humanoids
  • Motion Description Languages
  • Common Sense: Can a robot find it?
  • Analogy and metaphor: Can a robot understand this?
  • Emotion: what's it really good for? Why does a Robot need it?
  • Acquiring and developing social and physical knowledge
  • Consciousness in robotics - what it means for a robot to consider it's own mental state
  • schedule.html Sensorimotor Learning and Learning by Demonstration
  • Haptic and Tactile Sensing
  • Vision for Humanoid Robots
• Do something off the charts to amaze me!

Project Proposal Format

Your proposal must include the following information. The proposal should be 1 or 2 pages max. Email the proposal to allen@cs.columbia.edu

• Project Title
• Team Members and uni's
• Project Description: Give a clear and concise description of what you are going to accomplish by semester's end. Be specific about any capabilities, behaviors, tasks that you may want to attack. Make sure you include milestones of increasing complexity in what you will do. We need a way to gauge your success on the project - tier 1 results, tier 2 results (if time permits).

  You should also include some background references to similar work. Make sure you search google and google scholar for relevant previous work related to your project, and include a citation in your proposal. It is acceptable to do a project similar to an existing piece of work if you create your own independent version of the work. It is probably better to use the existing work as a guide, and explain how you might want to extend or differentiate this work in your project.

  If a group project, make sure you discuss how the work will be divided up.