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Back to Modern Robotics, Course 1: Foundations of Robot Motion

Learner Reviews & Feedback for Modern Robotics, Course 1: Foundations of Robot Motion by Northwestern University

4.7
stars
929 ratings

About the Course

Do you want to know how robots work? Are you interested in robotics as a career? Are you willing to invest the effort to learn fundamental mathematical modeling techniques that are used in all subfields of robotics? If so, then the "Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control" specialization may be for you. This specialization, consisting of six short courses, is serious preparation for serious students who hope to work in the field of robotics or to undertake advanced study. It is not a sampler. In Course 1 of the specialization, Foundations of Robot Motion, you will learn fundamental material regarding robot configurations, for both serial robot mechanisms and robots with closed chains. You will learn about configuration space (C-space), degrees of freedom, C-space topology, implicit and explicit representations of configurations, and holonomic and nonholonomic constraints. You will also learn how to represent spatial velocities and forces as twists and wrenches. This material is at the core of the study of anything that moves (e.g., robots). This course follows the textbook "Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control" (Lynch and Park, Cambridge University Press 2017). You can purchase the book or use the free preprint pdf. You will build on a library of robotics software in the language of your choice (among Python, Mathematica, and MATLAB) and use the free cross-platform robot simulator V-REP, which allows you to work with state-of-the-art robots in the comfort of your own home and with zero financial investment....

Top reviews

WO

Dec 29, 2021

Very Engineering driven course and you better be ready for the calculations... Made for Engineers.

Coming from an Electrical/Electronic background it was really intuitive. I plan on continuing...

EH

Oct 12, 2022

Great Course. But you need to read the book very carefully and with great focus to understand all the concepts and you should be familiar with Linear Algebra especially vectors and matrices.

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26 - 50 of 216 Reviews for Modern Robotics, Course 1: Foundations of Robot Motion

By Roshan Z

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May 17, 2020

A perfect course for undergraduate engineering students who want to pursue robotics as a career. A perfect balance of difficulty level is maintained, meaning you need to be good at linear algebra (Matrices) and geometrical transformations if you want to excel in this course. And a very basic elementary knowledge of any programming language like Python or MATLAB is desirable. The textbook offered in this course has helped me understand the course at a deeper level whereas the lectures provided an overview of the important points. Awesome course, has been challenging and very interesting!

By Juan C D S

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Mar 21, 2020

I don't like the videos too much to be honest, but the book is awesome as well as the practice exercises. They teach you a lot. The videos help only in cases where visualization of some movement can be useful, but I believe that the course should be given in a way similar to what regular classes look like, giving the lecture regarding the subject using the presentations as a guideline and not just reading what you wrote for an specific video. In general i truly love the course and I hope I can finish the whole program.

By Maksym B

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Jan 19, 2020

Great course, pretty fundamental. The professor is the writer of a book and I really feel that I learned something new by 1. reading the book, 2. watching lectures, 3. answering quizzes. The quality of learning would be much less by just reading a book or just watching lectures, the combination of reading and watching and answering quizzes makes this course great. However I would like to say that one must have good motivation to learn robotics, otherwise, these foundations might seem a bit raw.

By Thomas G

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Oct 8, 2019

This course gives you a good introduction into the topic of the underlying math of robot motion in space. I really enjoyed taking this course. Especially the combination of the videos together with the textbook is supporting both, a quick start and also a deeper understanding of the presented topics. Additionally the quizzes and assignments give you a good idea if you actually understood the topics with immediate feedback. I look forward to take the second course of this specialization.

By Virginia S

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Jan 13, 2020

The videos are very thoughtful and really add to the reading of the textbook. It is nice to have the video visualizations and explanations to augment the derivations. The textbook is well-written and clear, however there will be some extra reading to do if you don't understand linear algebra and matrices already. The quiz questions are challenging, but doable. I would have even liked a few more quiz questions to really practice the material.

By Ramu C

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Sep 2, 2018

This course covers the fundamentals of rigid-body transformations required to make further progress in robotics. It's very well organized and takes the student through the relevant chapters of the textbook co-authored by the instructor. Completing the quizzes, video lectures and reading material should give the student a good background in these areas. In addition, the provided code and simulator exercises add a lot of value.

By Pau C C

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Feb 19, 2019

Good Lie-group oriented robotics introduction. I highly recommend not to use the course library and implement the methods on you own as you'll learn more. Other than that, excellent.

Only drawback is the peer-graded assignments. If they were self evaluated with a good set of inputs and expected outputs, the experience would be much better. People who are learning shouldn't be evaluating from my point of view....

By Sudheer R T

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May 19, 2022

The course provides a clear understanding of degrees of freedom, configuration spaces and the methods used to represent the position and orientation of the robot. The book provided with the course is excellent material on the topics covered in lectures. Providing an answer key to the end of the chapter exercise problems will be helpful.

By Omer M

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Apr 19, 2020

I've Studied a course named introduction to robotics during my BSc studies, it was based on a text book Introduction to Robotics: Mechanics and Control by John J Craig. so i had a good foundation when i started this course and i can easily say although it just an introductory course but it has really boosted my Knowledge.

By Shivoh C

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May 23, 2019

truly mesmerizing, thankyou for creating this great course and I truly respect the valuable time the team have spend on developing and conveying this invaluable knowledge regarding the fundamentals of robotics, to robotics enthusiasts like me. I learned a lot and my yearning to learn more increased. thankyou once again.

By Madhukar T

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Jun 11, 2018

The best course to lay down foundations for anyone who have been looking forward to the same. A totally engulfing courses which surely adds it's value to your skill set and will not only brush up your knowledge, but the interactive nature of Instructor and timely reply to your queries are a total thumbs up.

By Abhijith R

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May 16, 2020

Good course. Excellent instruction videos supplemented by an easy to jump in textbook material. I think it was a perfect mix between theory and practical experience (considering practical experience in Robotics can be difficult to provide for an online course). Thank you for putting together this course!

By Abdulswamad

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Dec 30, 2021

Quite a challenging one, but its definitely worth it. I would strongly advise you instead of just watching the videos, read the Resources and the book Modern Robotics provided in this course. It would make your understanding way better since the Lecture videos are somehow shallow.

By Osama A A

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Jun 13, 2020

Amazing course, covers the basis of kinematics that are needed to analyze robot motion.

Some of the math concepts are tough to grasp, but very well put and delivered.

Reading in the book is a must for optimal understanding of the course material.

By Muslim A

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Apr 26, 2020

This course is very good as it introduces you to the basics of robotics control and motion. Nice and Interactive Tutors too. However, I suggest you have a sound fundamentals of Linear Algebra, matrices and Calculus. Good for Robotics basics

By Ahmed A

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Feb 17, 2019

Very insightful course and you will learn the essentials of robotics science. The skills you acquire here is indispensable if you interested in studying more advanced topics in that field such as robotics control and motion planning.

By John M

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Dec 6, 2018

Excellent course. I learned a lot. The assignments are challenging.

Of the Coursera offerings I've taken, this one gets the closest to my (admittedly failing) memories of a real undergraduate course with some meat to it. Well done!

By Yuxuan H

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May 8, 2018

Very Great Robotics Course, much more systematic than any other course available on coursera robotics course. It will be better if the exercise and assignments are more challenging. Also the available text book is a big plus!

By anita j j

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Mar 30, 2019

The videos were very usefull ,at first I watch the videos carefully ,with that short video I understand that what is the subject of this part . the summary of the formulas was very usefull and it makes the learning easy.

By Jean V

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Nov 7, 2021

I thought I knew about rigid body motion. Then, I took this course and learned so much more! The online material along with the book is packed full of information, well explained. I highly recommend this course.

By Armi M

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Apr 6, 2021

Thank you to Professor Lynch for such a brilliant, practical and fully understandable, and fully detailed course. It also would be better to put more emphasis on software than traditional calculation. Thank you.

By Wahyu G

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Aug 14, 2018

Very nice and compact explanation. Love the teaching style! You have to read the book to really grasp the material, if you're planning on taking this course, you have to take it seriously. It's pretty though.

By Hemanth K

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Aug 20, 2018

course content is little hard to understand for newies like me. but still following the modern robotics book makes it easier because that book has a lot of problem to solve by which we can gain confidence

By Giulio C

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Aug 8, 2019

Awesome introduction to robotics fundamentals. It's worth the effort!

Every lecture is well documented and, at the same time, the quizzes challenge your comprehension (you cannot just check some boxes).

By Alexander O

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Nov 26, 2018

This course very accurately and consequently introduces mathematical base of robot position and kinematics. I suggest there was a great work behind to make this complicated things convenient to learn.