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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Robotics: Computational Motion Planning by University of Pennsylvania

4.3
stars
1,028 ratings

About the Course

Robotic systems typically include three components: a mechanism which is capable of exerting forces and torques on the environment, a perception system for sensing the world and a decision and control system which modulates the robot's behavior to achieve the desired ends. In this course we will consider the problem of how a robot decides what to do to achieve its goals. This problem is often referred to as Motion Planning and it has been formulated in various ways to model different situations. You will learn some of the most common approaches to addressing this problem including graph-based methods, randomized planners and artificial potential fields. Throughout the course, we will discuss the aspects of the problem that make planning challenging....

Top reviews

FC

Nov 27, 2018

The course was challenging, but fulfilling. Thank you Coursera and University of Pennsylvania for giving this wonderful experience and opportunity that I might not experience in our local community!

SD

Jul 2, 2018

The topic was very interesting, and the assignments weren't overly complicated. Overall, the lesson was fun and informative , despite the bugs in the learning tool(especially, the last assignment.)

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1 - 25 of 259 Reviews for Robotics: Computational Motion Planning

By chris s

•

Feb 3, 2019

Topics covered are good, but need the following:

1) More detail in the lecture related to the exercises, with detailed examples in the lecture.

2) Much more detail in the end of week exercises including a writeup explaining the approach and code (as was the case in Dr. K's quadcoper course)

3) Revise or abandon the current autograder. The feedback is extremely poor to non existent when your code is not working.

3) Redo the code examples -- Too much time is spent attempting to understand what the provided code is for, what relation it has to the other files provided, and where the bugs in the code are. For example, I spent the majority of my week doing code archeology as subsequent debugging as no documentation is provided for the multiple files provided. As such, 80% time saving could be had if these recommendations were put into place.

As well, please use a traditional Matlab approach, not the we based excercise tool. I was only able to proceed in my excercies by using the Coursera provided Matlab desktop as well as and Octave as the web based exercise tool failed to provide insight into what was occurring when errors were present.

4) Provide more timely assistance. The TA assistance is very poor to non existant. When it was available, the assistance was not helpful as the answers did not address the question. On this note, I suspect that many students withdrew from the class as they could not get needed assistance to complete the assignments.

By Ivan I

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Mar 7, 2019

Very minimal lectures and explanation while the assignments are very complicated

By Jiaming S

•

Mar 14, 2016

Sorry to say that this is not a well prepared course. The course video provided is quite short, the quiz is rather than nothing and the programming assignments are buggy. I don't feel that I learned a lot from this course.

UPenn has let me down twice. Hope the 3rd one will be better.

By Evan W

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Apr 22, 2019

The content covers the basic theory well, but for the assignments significant reverse engineering of their MATLAB code is required and the pinned discussion usually lacks detail. Then, when you have questions, you can forget about getting any response from the course staff. If you can't find an answer to your question or help with your problem in a post from a fellow student, you're on your own--the staff ignores the discussion forums for months on end.

By Fredo C

•

Nov 28, 2018

The course was challenging, but fulfilling. Thank you Coursera and University of Pennsylvania for giving this wonderful experience and opportunity that I might not experience in our local community!

By Jonathan O

•

Mar 12, 2016

This was an interesting course, however there were bugs and errors in most of the assignment materials, which really impaired the learning experience since much of it was reduced to debugging the course organiser's code... Also the 3rd and fourth sections, including assignments, seemed to be rather small and to cover very little material, with little or no supporting material. Moreover, course staff were conspicuous by their absence on the course forums. A stark contrast to the abundance of support provided and material covered in aerial robotics.

By Raymond N H A

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Mar 30, 2016

Lack of support from course teaching staff in answering student's questions.

By Zhang K

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Feb 25, 2020

I'd like to say it's the best class I've had on Computational Motion Planning, and programming assignment was so great!!! I learnt a lot at assignment in programming, I like teachers and classes that can explain things briefly!! It worth 5 stars and 10000000% !!

Thank you very much, Please always see forums when you have problems in programming assignment. Teachers have some clues on those. But here one suggestion: It's always to short for programming guide. Sometimes, you need a lot of time to know how function works, and those parameters, not like deep learninng class which you can really learn and know what you need to do quickly from their guide.

I hope more people can learn this class, this is really an amazing class! (I even translated it into Chinese which is my native language for others to use.

Last but not least, I would like to express my sincere thanks to all teachers and assistants who have contributed to this great class, and I really appreciate your efforts.

By Riddhiman M

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Aug 15, 2021

This was a very well-structured course for anyone interested in Path Planning (even for a beginner). The assignments, even though a bit time consuming, really help in enhancing the understanding of the topic. Had a great time learning !

By Walt O

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Oct 15, 2022

I would say beginners will struggle with the contents of this course because it is heavily conceptual and requires you to read other resources to understand fully, In all, it was a splendid course.

By Sp D

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Jul 3, 2018

The topic was very interesting, and the assignments weren't overly complicated. Overall, the lesson was fun and informative , despite the bugs in the learning tool(especially, the last assignment.)

By seyed m s m

•

Aug 12, 2022

thanks

By Rohit K

•

Apr 1, 2020

I particularly enjoyed the video lectures and the multiple choice questions but the MATLAB assignments were quite difficult at first. Also, more information and guidelines should have been provided for these assignments as lack of guidelines make this tasks arduous.

By 刘宇轩

•

Dec 12, 2017

Great courses. The lectures are short but informative and I don't think anyone of these videos can be made shorter - they are so condensed and helpful. They could help form very intuitive understandings of the concepts and figure out how those algorithms work.

Most time is spent on really implementing these algorithms. Though the code templates are not perfect, and sometimes we may waste some time on debugging, I still learn quite a lot on motion planning from this course.

Accompanied with Control of Mobile Robot from Geo Tech also in Coursera, a better understanding on these problems can be developed. Highly recommended.

By Misbah d

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Jun 10, 2018

I appreciate the efforts of teaching faculty and the support provided by the staff on discussion forums was praise worthy. Lots of Regards for all the teachers and every hand involved in this course.Enjoyed this course alot, But I think there should be some glue lectures of basic MATLAB and ROS programming, for students who are not into these platforms yet, Moreover a hardware lesson should also be added with this for complete implementation of the taught enigma.

By Enrico A

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Jun 17, 2017

This brief course is the perfect introduction to motion planning methods. Although the lectures are short, they are clear and focused. This simplifies understanding of the main problems. There are also substantial programming assignments. However, the procedures are explained clearly so that the allotted time is more than sufficient for their completion. There are also suggestions on further improvements if you are interested in the topic.

By Huynh L D

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Jul 3, 2016

A great course in a unique topic. It is very well made with a balance of theory in robotics motion control with practical assignments using the popular language Matlab.

However, to enjoy this course thoroughly, I think the previous course (Aerial robotics) is very necessary. Also, prior experience with MatLab or a patience to pick up Matlab will be very essential to fare through this course smoothly.

By Nikola M

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Jan 27, 2019

its good that there are tips in the forum

some of the assignments have their quirks

there is always a thing in any school how much people separate technicalities from assignment story

some tend to make assignment that abstracts much of technical hurdles in interest of the course

some leave quirks related to tech with forum help the latter is kinda eliminated to good degree

thanks for the course its great

By abbasi m

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Jan 18, 2024

The course is really fun. If it appears too dense, it can be made digestible by accompanying it with the book "MODERN ROBOTICS: MECHANICS, PLANNING, AND CONTROL" by Kevin M. Lynch and Frank C. Park and supplementary video lectures (Ch#2 &10) on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jVu-Hijns70&list=PLggLP4f-rq02vX0OQQ5vrCxbJrzamYDfx ,

By 陈伟

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Jan 5, 2017

Quizzes are a little bit harder for my level. And they can help me to improve myself by keeping exploring and trying.

However, there is some quiz which I submit many times and I was told that I didn't pass. If you can tell me the reason, I can be more quickly to find out the mistakes.

Anyway, it is a good lesson. Thanks a lot!

By Nada A A

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Dec 24, 2019

This course helped me a lot to know many methods for motion planning and apply them to robotics problems. The assignments were really interesting and informing. The instructor was very good at explanation and the lectures were interesting. It is a really good course that I recommend for anyone interested in the topic.

By Anubhav H

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Aug 25, 2018

very engaging and informative course. enjoyed it throughout. teaching stuffs are excellent and cooperative too, really appreciate the presence of the discussion forum. helped me a lot. its like learning in a group. overall a must have for mechanical and aerospace engineer or enthusiasts.

By Iain M

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Mar 9, 2016

A well-presented, high-level, overview of computational robot planning. Students should understand the basics of how to apply some of the key fundamental techniques when they have completed this course. It should provide a good grounding for future study or research

By Yu-Wen C

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Jul 27, 2019

This course helps me to understand deeper about planning. In this course, one is able to grasp the basic knowledge of motion planning, including different path-finding algorithms, concepts of configuration space, mapping method, etc. Really appreciate the course.

By Sourav M

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Oct 7, 2017

Most basic and well explained course I have ever taken. The concepts are essential to obtain a proper understanding of advanced concepts in path planning and I believe the course does a good job in preparing the prospective student for the same.