CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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Term Project
Implementation of Human-Centered Robots and Intelligent Machines
Assigned: August 22, 2014
Multiple Due Dates (all materials must be submitted via BlackBoard)
Proposal Due: October 17, 23:59:59
Progress Report Due: October 31, 23:59:59
Code and Demo Due: November 21, 23:59:59
Final Report Due: December 5, 23:59:59
Presentation and Live Demo Period: November 21 – December 3
Introduction
In this term project, you will develop software packages for human-centered robots and/or other
intelligent machines. This project is an opportunity for you to apply the techniques you will learn in this
course to a problem of interest to you, which however must fit into the scope of human-centered
robotics and intelligent machines.
The term project is open to students. The project can be done individually or as a team (of at most five
students). You are allowed to use any packages that are publicly available to simplify your term project.
Students who are currently involved in a related research project are encouraged to frame this term
project around their own projects. Alternatively, you may design a project which extends one of the
case studies in the course, or you may want to select a brand new application domain or implement a
completely novel approach. You are not limited to the subjects which are discussed in the course. So,
be creative!
You will notice that Project 1 and Project 2 will be very helpful for you to select applications and
approaches you may want to use. The objective of assigning this term project at the beginning of the
course is to encourage you to plan early and think through before you really start your project.
Robotic Platform
You are open to choose whether to use robots in your term project. Two Turtlebot II robots will be
made available for students in this course. Turtlebot is an excellent robotic platforms that is widely
used in education and research. The following are some information of the robot:
User Manuel: http://www.clearpathrobotics.com/turtlebot_2/downloads/
ROS on Turtlebot: http://www.clearpathrobotics.com/blog/how-to-guide-ros-101/
Applications: Human following, voice control, prforming hand-overs, etc.
CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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Fig. 1 Illustration of Turtlebot II.
Important note: Turtlebot II robots (and other advanced robots with onboard PCs) can only be
programmed using C, C++ and Python in Robot Operating System (ROS) under Ubuntu. If you would like
to use these robots, at least one (1) member of your team is required to understand how to program in
ROS and Ubuntu. Otherwise, you need to talk with the instructor if you plan to use them.
Turning in your project
The term project has multiple due dates. The contents required to be included in each submission are
listed as follows:
Proposal Report (due on Oct. 17, 23:59:59):
(1). Select topic and/or application of your term project;
(2). Indicate whether you will use a robot in the project;
(3). Determine whether the project will be done individually or as a team; if working as a team,
list the team members (at most five) and specify a team leader who is responsible for contact;
(4). Provide a brief description of approaches you plan to use;
(5). Include a timeline and workload breakdown to show your plan of finishing the project.
Note: If working in team, it is the team leader’s responsibility to turn in all required project submissions
to Blackboard.
Progress Report (due on Oct. 31, 23:59:59):
(1). Describe the progress of your term project (working hardware, representation, etc.);
(2). If working as a team, include a workload report (agreed upon by all team members) that
states what each team member did on this project, along with a percentage breakdown
(totaling 100%).
CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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Code and Demo (due on Nov. 21, 23:59:59):
(1). Submit a video demo of your term project (e.g., how a robot or an intelligent system
interacts with people);
(2). Submit the software packages/code that produce that demo.
(3). Include a detailed instruction of how to compile, use and test the code.
(4). In general, you code must compile, be well-documented, and run without crashing.
Final Report (due on Dec. 5, 23:59:59):
Please follow the detailed guidelines of final report in the next section.
In-class presentation and live demo will be scheduled between Nov. 21 and Dec. 3. During that period,
you will have the chance to show off your awesome implementation as well as share the technical
details of how you make it happen.
Final Report/Paper Guidelines
Similar to Project 1 and Project 2, as part of your completed project, you must prepare a paper (3-6
pages) describing your term project. Your paper must be formatted using Latex and the standard 2column IEEE conference paper format (details of Latex and IEEE conference format will be discussed in
Project 1). Please do not exceed 6 pages for your paper.
The paper you turn in must be in pdf format and to BlackBoard by the team leader. Your paper must at
least include the following sections:
 Abstract: An abstract of 200 to 300 words summarizing your term projects and findings.
 Introduction: An introduction describing your term project, including the task and formulation
of research problems, a brief description of your methods, and structure of your final paper.
 Approach: A detailed description of your approach, with enough information to understand
and enable someone to recreate your system.
 Experiments: Experimental results plus an explanation and discussion of the results, such as in
what situations your system can obtain the best performance, when it fails, the efficiency of
your program, etc.
 Conclusion: A conclusion and future work section that summaries your term project, point out
future work you believe would improve your implementation, and any other insightful
observations you’d like to make.
 Appendix: If it’s a team work, a workload report in Appendix (agreed upon by all team
members, which states what each team member did on this project in detail, along with a
percentage breakdown (totaling 100%).
CSCI498B/598B Human-Centered Robotics, Fall 2014
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Grading
Your grade (totally 100 points) will be based on:
 5 points: Your proposal report
 5 points: Your progress report
 50 points: Your documented code and video demos.
 40 points: Your final paper (35 points) and in-class presentation (5 points).
Note: Live in-class demos will be awarded an additional 5 points!
The following are some clarifications of the grading procedures:
How grading will be done for teams: The grading for this assignment, when working in teams, will be as
follows. All members of the team will receive the same grade as a starting point, based on the
submission. Then, the Workload Report information (submitted with Progress Report and Final Report)
either results in the scores staying the same, or it can result in one student’s score moving down by
some amount (maximum of 10 points).
Graduate vs undergraduate teams: If a team includes any graduate students, it is considered as a
graduate team. Graduate teams will be graded more strictly on quality of the research and paper
presentation. The instructor expects a more sophisticated implementation and a thorough analysis of
your results. On the other hand, it is understandable that undergraduate students in graduate teams
have a slightly lower workload.