Coursera Resources

Most resources for the six-course Coursera Modern Robotics Specialization are hosted on Coursera, but some are more conveniently collected on this wiki.

General (All Courses)

Things you should complete before taking any of the courses

• Getting Started with the Modern Robotics Code Library
• Getting Started with the V-REP Simulator

General references

• The Modern Robotics wiki, which includes a link to purchase the published hardback (Cambridge University Press) or to download a pdf of the book preprint. This site also has book errata, the Modern Robotics (MR) code library (in Mathematica, MATLAB, and Python), V-REP robot simulator, V-REP simulation scenes, and other information.
• Introduction to V-REP and sample V-REP scenes used in the Specialization
• Direct link to the book preprint, including Appendix A, Summary of Useful Formulas
• Errata (if you see an error not already reported, please report it!)
• MR Code Library
• V-REP robot simulator

Prerequisite refresher readings

• A linear algebra refresher appendix to accompany the book. (other references: online textbook,useful matrix identities, positive-definite matrices, ellipsoids and their relationship to positive-definite matrices, complex numbers)
• Calculus
• Basic differential equations
• Mechanics (online textbook, moment = r cross f)
• Programming in Python
• Programming in MATLAB
• Programming in Mathematica

Programming

The MR code library is written in Python, MATLAB, and Mathematica. Since you will be building on this code, it is highly recommended that you program in one of these languages. If you choose another language, you will have to port the MR library yourself.

• You can obtain Python for free at https://www.python.org.
• You can obtain Mathematica at https://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/. You will have to pay for it.
• As a result of support from Mathworks, you can obtain a free license to MATLAB while you are taking a course. Please see the individual Coursera course for details. Otherwise you can pay for MATLAB at https://www.mathworks.com/.
• An alternative to MATLAB is the free GNU Octave scientific programming language, which uses syntax essentially identical to MATLAB. You can download it at GNU.

Course 1: Foundations of Robot Motion

• The degrees of freedom of the human arm discussion prompt

Course 4: Robot Motion Planning and Control

• The A* graph search project
• The sampling-based motion planning project

Course 5: Robot Manipulation and Wheeled Mobile Robots

• The planar form-closure testing project
• The stability of an assembly project

Course 6: Capstone Project, Mobile Manipulation

• The capstone mobile manipulation project