Resources

Below is a list of articles, books, videos, podcasts, and other resources relevant to the topics covered in this course. It is a work-in-progress and is inteded to serve as a library of readings that students can learn from, contribute to, interact with, and, for the purposes of the class, choose to read from for their homeworks. Please let me know if you come across a good resource so I can add it here!

IntroductoryPermalink

OverviewPermalink

• Toward Robotic Cars – article by Sebastian Thrun about leading the Stanford team to victory in the DARPA Grand Challenge
• Everything about Self Driving Cars Explained for Non-Engineers – Medium post focusing on the intuition for neural nets and other AI tech used in autonomy
• A Beginner’s Guide to Self-Driving Cars – beginner-friendly Medium post
• Chris Urmson: How a Driverless Car sees the Road – Ted Talk by Chris Urmson (CEO of Aurora and ex-head of Google’s self-driving car project)
• Sebastian Thrun: Google’s Driverless Car – Ted Talk by Sebastian Thrun about his involvement in creating the Google self-diriving car project (now Waymo)
• Talks at Google: Lawrence Burns – interview of Lawrence Burns, author of “Autonomy” and seasoned veteran in the auto industry, from GM to the DARPA Challenges to Waymo
• How Self-Driving Cars Work – Medium post (and Ted Talk) by David Silver, head of self-driving at Udacity
• Let’s Talk About Self-Driving Cars – Medium post about general effects of autonomy in society
• The WIRED Guide to Self-Driving Cars – article debriefing the self-driving car space for the layman
• Self-Driving Cars: State of the Art – MIT Self-Driving Cars (6.S094) introductory lecture on what the progress of self-driving cars is today
• Automated Vehicle Terminology – article introducing terminology

HistoryPermalink

• SciShow: A Brief History of Robotics – video by Hank Green
• Meet ALVINN, the self-driving car from 1989 – article about the “first” self-driving car, back in the 80s at CMU.

ApplicationsPermalink

Self-Driving CarsPermalink

• The Top 263 Companies Racing Towards Autonomous Cars – a cool infographic about how broad the space is.
• Steps to Autonomy – blog post by Benedict Evans (venture capitalist at a16z) talking about the levels of autonomous vehicles and industry adoption
• How the Udacity Self-Driving Car Works – Medium post by David Silver (head of self-driving curriculum development at Udacity)
• a16z: Self-Driving Cars — Where Are We, Really? – podcast interviewing Taggart Matthiesen (Director of Lyft Level 5), James Wu (CEO of DeepMap), and Qasar Younis (CEO of Applied Intuition). It’s a progress report on the state-of-the-art in self-driving from some of the most influential people in the industry.
• Greylock Ventures: Safely Scaling Autonomous Vehicles – podcast interviewing Chris Urmson (CEO of Aurora), Reid Hoffman (Cofounder of LinkedIn), and Stefan Heck (CEO of Nauto) about how to scale autonomy tech.
• Autonocast: On Aurora Island – podcast about Aurora. Aurora is one of the most closely-watched companies in the space right now. They’re still in stealth mode and led by a phenomenal team.
• Autonocast: Oliver Cameron of Voyage – podcast interviewing Oliver Cameron (CEO of Voyage). Voyage develops robotaxis for retirement communities in Florida.
• MIT Self Driving Cars: Oliver Cameron – guest lecture by Oliver Cameron (CEO of Voyage). Voyage develops robotaxis for retirement communities in Florida.
• Smarter Cars: Applied Intuition – podcast interviewing Qasar Younis (CEO of Applied Intution) about Simulation Software for Autonomous Cars
• MIT AI: Kyle Vogt, Cruise Automation – podcast/video interviewing Kyle Vogt (CEO of Cruise). Kyle previously cofounded Twitch and participated in the DARPA Challenge. Cruise was recently acquired by GM.
• a16z: Capitalizing on an Autonomous Vehicle Future – podcast with Qasar Younis and Peter Ludwig (CEO and CTO of Applied Intution) explaining the autonomy industry and future outlook
• Venture Stories: The Present and Future of Autonomous Vehicles – podcast with Qasar Younis (CEO of Applied Intution) and Alexandr Wang (CEO of Scale.ai) discuss the AV development process, AV startups, and how their companies are solving a piece of the puzzle
• Aurora’s Approach to Development – Medium article by Aurora detailing their engineering strategy; provides good insights into a leading AV company’s development process
• Super Hacker George Hotz: I Can Make Your Car Drive Itself for Under $1,000 – interview with George Hotz, reknowned “hacker” and founder of Comma.ai, an open-source approach to self-driving

Drones and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)Permalink

• Vijay Kumar: Robots that Fly… and Cooperate – Ted Talk by Vijay Kumar (renowned UPenn professor researching autonomous drones) about swarming
• Vijay Kumar: The Future of Flying Robots – Ted Talk by Vijay Kumar about future directions of drone use and research
• Engineering a New Mission for Drones – Ted Talk by Keenan Wyrobek (CTO of Zipline). Zipline works on autonomous plane delivery for emergency healthcare supplies in developing countries.
• How We’re Using Drones to Deliver Blood and Save Lives – Ted Talk by Keller Rinaudo (CEO of Zipline). Zipline works on autonomous plane delivery for emergency healthcare supplies in developing countries.
• a16z: The Self-Flying Camera – podcast interviewing Adam Bry (CEO of Skydio). Skydio is a self-flying camera for professional and amateur videographers.

General-purpose and Humanoid RobotsPermalink

• Marc Raibert: Meet Spot, the robot dog that can run, hop and open doors – Ted Talk by Marc Raibert (CEO of Boston Dynamics)

Localization and MappingPermalink

SensorsPermalink

• An Introduction to LIDAR: The Key Self-Driving Car Sensor – Medium post by Oliver Cameron
• Why Experts Believe Cheaper, Better LiDAR is Right Around the Corner – technical article about the state-of-the-art for LiDAR and different types
• How 10 Leading Companies are Trying to Make Powerful, Low-Cost LiDAR – article overviewing the different industry approaches to LiDAR
• A New Doppler Lidar Solves Self-Driving Cars’ Need for Speed – article about a company that is developing a new type of LiDAR based on Frequency Modulation

MappingPermalink

• Where Self-Driving Cars Fall Short, and How We Can Make Them Safer – Medium post by Andrew Kouri (CEO of lvl5.ai). lvl5 leverages crowdsourcing to create and sell HD Maps.
• The Future of HD Mapping – podcast interviewing Andrew Kouri (CEO of lvl5.ai). lvl5 leverages crowdsourcing to create and sell HD Maps.
• Rethinking Maps for Self-Driving – Medium post by Lyft Level 5’s Engineering team, which details the industry approach to creating and scaling HD Maps (layering, semantic map making, etc).
• HD Maps for Self-Driving Cars – Medium post

State EstimationPermalink

• How a Kalman Filter works, in pictures – blog post
• Robot Localization I: Recursive Bayesian Estimation – blog post
• Robot Localization II: The Histogram Filter – blog post
• Robot Localization III: The Kalman Filter – blog post
• Robot Localization IV: The Particle Filter – blog post

Motion PlanningPermalink

Basics of Graphs and Graph SearchPermalink

• Going Broad In A Graph: BFS Traversal – blog post explaining BFS with visuals
• Deep Dive Through A Graph: DFS Traversal – blog pose explaining DFS with visuals
• Finding The Shortest Path, With A Little Help From Dijkstra – blog post explaining Dijkstra’s with visuals
• Dijkstra’s Algorithm - Computerphile – great video explaining Dijkstra’s with an example
• there are a ton of other resources on Google about these topics, they are very standard…

A* SearchPermalink

• Informed Search – UC Berkeley CS188 lecture on A* search
• A* (A Star) Search Algorithm - Computerphile – awesome video explaining A* using an example, with comparisons to Dijkstra’s
• Introduction to the A* algorithm – interactive and beginner-friendly article about A*
• Heuristics – article about heuristics for A*

Advanced AlgorithmsPermalink

• Constructing Artificial Potential Fields – UPenn Robotics lecture on Artificial Potential Fields, with examples

ApplicationsPermalink

• A* in Action - Artificial Intelligence for Robotics – clip of A* running in a simulation from Udacity

Motion ControlPermalink

Basics of Control TheoryPermalink

• Control Systems Lectures - Closed Loop Control – graphic video on why closed-loop feedback control is beneficial over open-loop controllers
• Matlab: Understanding Control Systems – great series of videos on the basics of control theory. The most relevant videos are as follows:
  • Part 1: Open-Loop Control Systems
  • Part 2: Feedback Control Systems
  • Part 3: Components of a Feedback Control System

PID Control and its ApplicationsPermalink

• PID Control - A brief introduction – really great short video explaining the basics of control theory and PID in an inutitive and visual way
• Controlling Self Driving Cars – awesome video running PID on a small car and showing how PID terms work
• Simple Examples of PID Control – video running through some drawn-out examples demonstrating the usefulness of each of the P, I and D terms
• What is PID Control? – great explanation of PID by following a motivating example
  • The above video is part of the Matlab: Understanding PID Control Series, which is worth checking out as well
• PID Control - Udacity Self-Driving Car Engineer Nanodegree Project – really cool video showing a PID controller running on an autonomous car simulation, explores how different components of the PID influence the car’s behavior

Other ApplicationsPermalink

• Raffaello D’Andrea: The Astounding Athletic Power of Quadcopters – Ted Talk by Raffaello D’Andrea
• End to End Learning for Self-Driving Cars – NVIDIA (paper)

PerceptionPermalink

Ethics, Safety and PolicyPermalink

• Why Ethics Matters for Autonomous Cars – article by Patrick Lin

Social EffectsPermalink

• The Autonomy Ecosystem – series of 8 short videos by Frank Chen
• Mobility for Everyone: The Social and Economic Benefits of Autonomous Vehicles – Medium post
• Autonomous Vehicles and the End of Privacy – HackerNoon Medium post

Educational ResourcesPermalink

Relevant Courses at UVAPermalink

• CS/ECE/SYS 6501: Autonomous Mobile Robots – taught by Nicola Bezzo
• CS 4501: F1/10th Autonomous Racing – taught by Madhur Behl
• CS 4710: Artificial Intelligence
• CS 4501: Machine Learning
• CS 4501/6501: Computer Vision (or some variant) – taught by Vicente Ordonez Roman
• CS 6501: Software Engineering for Robotics – taught by Sebastian Elbaum

Free Online CoursesPermalink

• Artificial Intelligence for Robotics – Udacity + Georgia Tech (taught by Sebastian Thrun)
• Autonomous Mobile Robots – edX + ETH-Zurich (taught by Roland Siegwart)
• Control of Mobile Robots – Coursera + Georgia Tech (taught by Magnus Egerstedt)
• Robotics: Aerial Robotics – Coursera + UPenn (taught by Vijay Kumar)
• Robotics: Computational Motion Planning – Coursera + UPenn
• Robotics: Perception – Coursera + UPenn
• Robotics: Estimation and Learning – Coursera + UPenn

TextbooksPermalink

• Autonomous Mobile Robots – Siegwart, Nourbakhsh, Scaramuzza [pdf]
• Principles of Robot Motion: Theory, Algorithms, and Implementations – Thrun, Choset, Lynch, et al.
• Modern Robotics: Mechanics, Planning, and Control – Lynch, Park [pdf]

Career ResourcesPermalink

• How to Land an Autonomous Vehicle Job – Medium post by David Silver
• Twitter
  • Twitter is a great place for learning about what’s happening in industry. A lot of tech people like to tweet opinions, analyses, announcements, and even have intellectual debates about develpments in the space. Not only is Twitter a great way to stay updated and immersed in the field, it is also a fantastic opportunity to interact with the community and reach out to others in the space. Many of the people involved in projects (founders, developers, investors, media, enthusiasts, etc) have their DMs open and are receptive if you reach out (and they also sometimes tweet out ways you could get involved with their projects). I really cannot emphasize enough how undervalued Twitter is for professional development in tech. To that end I’ve curated the above Twitter List of relevant accounts to get you started!