Online Adaptation
In response to uncertainty around restrictions on travel and gatherings for fall 2020, UBC has chosen to offer the vast majority of its fall classes in an online format. While CPSC 515 would typically be taught in a traditional lecture / seminar style, I have confidence that the course learning goals can be met effectively through the online mechanisms outlined below.
Online Tools for Interaction with Instructor and Other Students
We will use a mixture of asynchronous and synchronous communication.
Synchronous:
Lectures will be online through Zoom:
If you are signing on through the Zoom app a phone line, use Meeting ID 613 2795 9888 and Passcode 515515.
During lectures I will paste relevant material into a shared Google Doc stored in CPSC 515 Shared Lecture Docs.
Files are named according to the date of the corresponding lecture.
Please open the relevant file for viewing before the lecture starts.
In the event of a Zoom lecture crash:
If you are still in the room, wait there to see if I manage to get back in.
If you have been kicked out of the room, try to re-enter it using the Meeting ID and Passcode above.
Monitor the shared lecture file to see if I post instructions there.
Check on the Piazza site to see if I post a note there.
Lecture recordings:
As outlined below, I have designed the lectures to be interactive explorations of design problems building on the basic content from AIfR (see below). Much of the benefit of the lecture is lost if you simply view the recording.
For now I am posting links to the recorded lectures at the GitHub lecture schedule page, but that may change if lecture participation drops.
Students who do not attend live lectures will lose any available participation marks for that lecture.
Students who are living in a significantly different timezone can contact me directly to discuss options.
Asynchronous
The course discussion forum will be on Piazza.
Unless your question is of a personal nature, please post to the discussion forum rather than emailing me.
Sebastian Thrun's Artificial Intelligence for Robotics (AIfR) course at Udacity.
We will be working through one topic (consisting of 3-4 "lessons") per week at the beginning of the term.
Please register for this free course. If you are unable (or unwilling) to register, please let me know and we can discuss alternatives.
I recommend that you work through the online quizzes attached to most of the segments in each lesson, as you will be expected to extend the skills that they practice during lectures and homework. However, I will not be recording any grades from these online quizzes.
Homework instructions and files will be on GitHub.
The top level README.md file will contain links to each assignment.
UBC Canvas
In order to allow students who are not able to formally register to still follow along with the course, I use Canvas only for the portions of the course which involve formal assessment.
That plan may have to change if we need to access resources only available through Canvas.
Course Content
I plan to deliver as few online lectures as I can manage. It is tough to focus throughout a lengthy lecture, and it is tough to focus through an online portal, so combining them is a terrible idea. Instead, my plan is:
Lecture content delivered through existing online videos and/or reading.
I have identified a few relevant online courses whose videos are free to access. For the first 7–8 weeks you will be expected to watch the videos from a corresponding section of the online course before participating in the online session.
UBC library has subscriptions to all of the major conferences, journals and book collections. Through UBC’s VPN service you can access this material from your home computer. For some lectures in the first 7–8 weeks and most lectures in the remaining weeks you will be expected to read paper(s) or book chapters before participating in the online session.
Online sessions focused on solving design problems from computational robotics in small groups for the first 7–8 weeks.
At the beginning of each session I will pose a design problem related to the required pre-session viewing / reading.
The remainder of the session will alternate between breakout rooms where students can work through steps of the problem in small groups, and full class readouts where the groups can report their progress and challenges before moving to the next step of the design.
Students will be reassigned to different groups on a regular basis so that everybody in the class can interact with everybody else.
Problem "solutions" may be in the form of bullet point notes, short calculations, sketching, pseudo-code and/or executable code development.
Online sessions will be held in the currently scheduled lecture slots: Mondays & Wednesdays, noon - 13:30 pacific time. At the beginning of September I will survey students to see what kind of additional accommodations might be necessary for students in distant time-zones.
Online sessions devoted to discussion of research papers in most remaining weeks.
During this period all registered students will be required to choose and present one paper related to their chosen project topic.
Student presentations will be 10–15 minutes and must be pre-recorded (I will identify some suitable software options for pre-recording by early October). Other students will be expected to watch these presentations in advance of the online session.
Audience members will then be randomly chosen to pose questions or make comments on the research paper during the live online sessions.
Homework
A modern autonomous robot requires a code base whose size and complexity is hard to fully comprehend; consequently, we build upon many interacting layers of software to enable it to accomplish its tasks.
The focus of homework assignments will be for students to become comfortable working with ROS (version 1), a robot-oriented middleware framework, and some software stacks from the ROS ecosystem designed to solve common computational robotics challenges.
Early assignments will be done in the Gazebo simulation environment, and it will be possible to complete all assignments in simulation; however, I am investigating inexpensive robot options which may permit students to acquire a small physical robot for later assignments.
Students will need to have access to a computer capable of running ROS and Gazebo. The first assignment will involve getting them running on your local machine.
Projects
Course projects in CPSC 515 are always individualized to the student(s) own interests; consequently, I do not anticipate the project component of the course requiring much adjustment to the online environment.
Online sessions in the final week(s) will be devoted to presentation of course projects (which may not yet be completed).
During this period all registered students will be required to give a conference-style presentation of their research project (which may not yet be completed).
Student presentations will be 10–15 minutes and must be pre-recorded (I will point to some suitable software options). Other students will be expected to watch these presentations in advance of the online session.
Audience members will then be randomly chosen to pose questions or make comments during the live online sessions.
Final written reports will be due at near the end of the exam period in December.
For more information, see the Projects page in the sidebar.
The Situation May Change
None of us can predict how the situation may change between now and December.
Adjustments to the plans outlined above may be necessary for the whole class and/or on an individual basis. I will endeavour to accommodate challenges which may arise for students during the term.
I welcome feedback on any aspect of this plan before, during and after the term
You can post (anonymously if you wish) to the course Piazza site while it remains open.
You can email me directly.
Remember: We're all in this together.