CS 639: Autonomous Robotics

CS 639, Section 001, Spring 2026
Department of Computer Sciences
University of Wisconsin–Madison


Important Notes

This schedule is tentative and subject to change. Please check back often. In particular, the deadlines for the homework sets/project may change; please see Canvas for the actual deadlines.

Reading responses are due on Gradescope by Monday at 12pm (US Central Time) the week they are assigned. For example, the reading listed for Tuesday, January 27 is due on Monday, January 26.

Tentative Schedule

Date Lecture Readings (Respond by Monday at 12pm) Homework Released Homework Due
Tuesday, Jan 20 Course Overview: Topics, Goals, Evaluation
Thursday, Jan 22 Probability Review and Basic Interaction Model Optional reading: Calculus review, Probability review
Tuesday, Jan 27 Basic Control I Ben Kuipers's Tutorial on Control Theory (first 10 sections), Braitenberg Vehicles Control Assignment
Thursday, Jan 29 Basic Control II
Tuesday, Feb 3 Bayes Filter Notes on the Bayes and Kalman filter
Thursday, Feb 5 Kalman Filter
Tuesday, Feb 10 Extended Kalman Filters Notes on the EKF and particle filter Control Assignment
Thursday, Feb 12 Particle Filters Filtering Assignment
Tuesday, Feb 17 Localization Introduction to particle methods; Discussion on particle filters
Thursday, Feb 19 Mapping
Tuesday, Feb 24 SLAM I SLAM Tutorial
Thursday, Feb 26 SLAM II Filtering Assignment
Tuesday, Mar 3 Advanced SLAM I SLAM Survey [Sections I,III,IV,VIII,IX,X; Can skim "Brief Survey" paragraphs.] SLAM Assignment
Thursday, Mar 5 Graph SLAM and Outlook
Tuesday, Mar 10 Rigid Body Transformations Chapter 3 introduction, 3.1, and 3.2 of Intro to Autonomous Robots.
Thursday, Mar 12 Forward Kinematics Planning Assignment SLAM Assignment
Tuesday, Mar 17 Inverse Kinematics Chapter 13 of Intro to Autonomous Robots
Thursday, Mar 19 Motion Planning Slides from Pieter Abbeel
Midterm: March 24 in class
Thursday, Mar 26 Behavior Architectures
Tuesday, Mar 31 Spring Break!
Thursday, Apr 2 Spring Break!
Tuesday, Apr 7 Reinforcement Learning I Reinforcement Learning in Robotics: A Survey Section 2 (excluding 2.2), Section 3 Final Project Planning Assignment
Thursday, Apr 9 Reinforcement Learning II
Tuesday, Apr 14 Human Robot Interaction I What is Interaction? (Required) Interactions with Robots (Optional)
Thursday, Apr 16 Human Robot Interaction II
Tuesday, Apr 21 Imitation Learning Google's SayCan Paper Final Project Planning Assignment
Thursday, Apr 23 LLMs and Robots
Tuesday, Apr 28 Application Case Study Why the future doesn't need us
Thursday, Apr 30 Societal Impacts Final Project