Course Project Guidelines
Course Project Guidelines
In this course, you can work individually or in a team of <= 4 students on a project you are interested in. The topic of the project should be related to manipulation, either robotic manipulation or human manipulation. For the project, you have several options.
The first option is to explore an open-ended research problem, in any format.
The second option is to reproduce an existing robotic manipulation paper/technique/hardware and try to implement some improvement ideas on top of it.
The third option is to survey a small research area or a technique in robotic manipulation, and do some analysis over it.
After you form your team, schedule a meeting and clear the topic with me before the project proposal. I can also help you find materials and resources, and choose an appropriate scope.
You will need to present your project proposal, mid-term progress, and the final results throughout the semester. You will need to submit a final project report in a robotic conference format at the end of this course.
The purpose of the project proposal presentation is to present your project ideas to the class, receive feedback, gather resource suggestions, and finalize your plans. The presentations are informal, but visuals can be helpful (though not mandatory). Each team will have up to 7 minutes to present, including at least 2 minutes for feedback and questions. During the pitch, clearly articulate what you plan to do, why you chose the topic, the resources you have available, how you will measure progress and success, and the goals or milestones you hope to achieve.
The written proposal serves as a foundational step for your final report. It will lay out your initial plan and provide a clear roadmap for your project. The proposal should include the following sections:
Problem Statement/Goals: Clearly explain the project idea, its objectives, and why it is interesting or important. You may begin with a question you aim to answer or a comparison you want to explore.
Approach: Outline your plan for achieving the project goals. For hardware projects, include a schematic or hardware diagram. For software-based projects, provide a block diagram showing inputs, processes, and outputs. For studies or experiments, detail your hypotheses and experimental design. Break your approach into stages with specific milestones so that you can easily evaluate your progress.
Resources: Identify any resources you need for this project. How available are they?
Demos: Explain how you will showcase your progress and results, specifying intermediate, final, and stretch goals for demonstrations.
Evaluation: Describe the metrics or benchmarks you will use to measure success. Specify how your evaluation will answer the questions or goals outlined in the problem statement.
Timeline: Break the project into stages, with clear deadlines and deliverables for each stage. Plan early demos that demonstrate partial progress, so you can still showcase results if challenges arise later.
The final presentation is a more formal showcase of your project. Each team will have 15 minutes to present their work using slides to summarize key aspects, including the motivation, project goals, approach, evaluation plan, and final results. Your presentation should highlight any challenges faced during the project, solutions implemented, lessons learned, and what you would do differently with more time.
After the final presentation, you have two weeks to finish the project and submit the report. The final report should build upon your initial proposal, reflecting the progress made and including detailed descriptions of your work. The report should be in a robotics conference format. For example, you can use the conference paper formats in ICRA and CoRL. The report should look like a paper from those conferences. You should also include these important sections:
Refined Technical Content: Expand on the proposal’s technical sections to include the methods, designs, or algorithms implemented during the project.
Results: Present results using plots, tables, images, screenshots, or videos, applying the evaluation metrics outlined in the proposal.
Analysis: Discuss your findings, highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of your approach.
Challenges: Detail any difficulties encountered and how you addressed them.
Future Work: Provide insights into what you would do differently or what additional improvements could be made if time permits.