You can sign up to present a paper at this link. See Piazza for detailed instructions.
If you drop the class and do not intend to present a paper that you signed up for, please remove your name from the spreadsheet! As a courtesy to the instructor, please do this at least a week in advance of the presentation time. Please also message the instructors to let them know.
You cannot sign up for both presentations on a single day! All of your presentations must be on different days.
You need to sign up for a presentation slot at least 48 hours in advance of the presentation time
If you are signed up for a presentation slot and then remove your name within 48 hours of the presentation, you will get zero points for the presentation.
Initially, up to 2 students can sign up for any paper. You should meet with your partner to prepare a joint presentation. If you do not have a partner, you will need to present the paper by yourself.
You can arrange to meet with a TA or the course instructor to talk about the paper before you present.
Your presentation will be graded on the following rubric:
Presentation of motivation of the task (why is this task important: 1 points
Presentation of: Why do previous approaches not solve this task? 2 points
Presentation of background material needed to understand the paper: 3 points
Presentation of method: 3 points
Presentation of results: 3 points
Presentation of paper summary: 3 points
Timed correctly: 3 points
At midnight (EST) the day before class, send to the TA’s and course instructor 5 discussion questions (16881-tas@lists.andrew.cmu.edu): 3 points
You will receive a maximum of 2 points if this is submitted up to 1 hour late; you will receive a maximum of 1 point if it is submitted up to 1 hour before class. After 1 hour before class, you will receive 0 credit for the discussion questions.
After class, post on the class spreadsheet a link to your presentation (column H): 3 points
Bonus for presenting one of the first papers: 3 exp(-i/5) where i is the presentation number (0-indexed)
Max (not including extra credit): 24 points
You should meet with your partner to discuss the paper before making the presentation. Make sure you understand it: the method, results, strengths, weaknesses.
If you don’t understand something in the paper:
Talk to your partner
Meet with the instructors
Email the paper authors
Read some of the background material in more detail
Each presentation will be 20 minutes long. Make sure to practice and time the presentation!
You are welcome to reuse figures or videos from the authors in their paper, presentations, blog posts, etc.
Here are some guidelines for structuring the presentation:
Motivation: Show some images or videos from the results section showing us what the paper is trying to get the robot to achieve. Then explain the problem that this paper is trying to address and why it is important. This should be around 5% of the presentation time.
Here are some examples of good motivation slides:
Why do previous approaches not solve this task: Do not just list a bunch of related papers and describe how each one works. Instead, group the related papers into 3-4 categories of approaches. For each category, explain roughly how each category approaches the problem, and describe the limitations of the general approach of each category. This should be around 10% of the presentation time.
Background material:
Find the basic methods (RL / optimization / etc) that this paper builds on and give a brief explanation (ideally with a visualization) of how each of these methods work. You can take the visualization from another paper or from a blog post that explains these background methods. Do not just list the previous methods that this paper uses without an explanation. This background material can either be presented before the method or it can be integrated into the methods section of the presentation.
Method:
First give a brief outline of the different components of the method. This can usually be done best by copying a systems or outline figure from the paper and pointing to the different parts.
Then go into detail on each part of the method and explain how it works. Show equations but also try to show visualizations to give an intuition of how the method works, e.g. show a flow diagram or draw example trajectories. Feel free to copy visualizations from their paper or presentation but you can also make your own to supplement this.
The background material + methods should combined be around 45% of the presentation time.
Results:
Start by playing videos of the robot / simulation showing qualitatively what the proposed method can achieve.
Then show each of the result figures / tables (as many as time allows) and explain what this result demonstrates. Make sure to point to the different parts of the figure / table that you want the reader to look at, since the reader will not have seen this figure / table before.
This should be around 35% of the presentation time.
Summary: Recap the main points of the method and summarize the main results. This should be around 5% of the presentation time.
The day before your presentation, before midnight, you and your partner must send to the TA’s and course instructor (16881-tas@lists.andrew.cmu.edu) a list of 5 discussion questions; these questions will be used to spur discussion during class. Possible topics for these discussion questions include:
Why does the paper use approach A instead of B?
Approach B might be a simpler approach to the same problem
Approach B might be another approach presented on the same day or previously in class
What are the tradeoffs between approach A and approach B for tackling problem X?
(where B is a paper presented on the same day or presented previously in class, or you can describe B in your presentation)
How would this method handle situation Y?
How could we design a method to tackle situation Y? (e.g. a problem unsolved by these papers)
Questions that are less conducive to a productive discussion include:
Clarification of technical details
This is a good question to ask on Piazza, or ask the TA / instructor, your partner, or email the paper authors, but not necessarily conducive to discussion
How does this paper differ from paper B (which was not previously presented in class or on the same day)
This is a good question to ask on Piazza, but not in class discussion, since it will exclude many students who have not read paper B
Here's a presentation by the Global Communications Center (GCC) at CMU about how to make effective presentations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbdO7adBRFE
The main takeaway is: try to avoid bulleted lists and use visuals instead, where possible.
For more info by the gcc on effective communication: