For Instructors

Principles of Robot Autonomy is designed to be taught. Whether you are running a full semester-long robotics course or folding a few chapters into an existing class, this page gathers everything you need to build your own course on top of the book.

Build your course

The book grew out of a decade of teaching at Stanford and the chapters map directly onto these courses, which you can use as reference syllabi, pacing guides, and sources of additional class materials:

Lecture slides

The book's chapters are accompanied by lecture slides in PDF and PPTX formats. The slides are organized by course and lecture, and you can download them for use in your own classes.

Stanford AA174A / AA274A Principles of Robot Autonomy I

1 Course overview, intro to robotic systems and ROS PDF PPTX soon
2 Fundamentals of ROS PDF PPTX soon
3 State space dynamics — definitions and modeling PDF PPTX soon
4 State space dynamics — computation and simulation PDF PPTX soon
5 Trajectory optimization PDF PPTX soon
6 Trajectory tracking & closed-loop control PDF PPTX soon
7 Graph search algorithms PDF PPTX soon
8 Sampling-based motion planning PDF PPTX soon
9 Robotic sensors & introduction to computer vision PDF PPTX soon
10 Camera models & coordinate frames PDF PPTX soon
11 Image processing, feature detection, and feature description PDF PPTX soon
12 Information extraction PDF PPTX soon
13 Deep learning for computer vision PDF PPTX soon
14 Intro to state estimation & filtering theory PDF PPTX soon
15 Parametric filtering (KF and EKF) PDF PPTX soon
16 Markov localization and EKF-localization PDF PPTX soon
17 Multi-sensor perception & sensor fusion PDF · Part 1PDF · Part 2 PPTX · Part 1 soonPPTX · Part 2 soon
18 Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) PDF PPTX soon

Stanford AA203 Optimal and Learning-Based Control

1 Course overview; intro to nonlinear optimization PDF PPTX soon
2 Optimization theory PDF PPTX soon
3 Calculus of variations PDF PPTX soon
4 Indirect methods for optimal control PDF PPTX soon
5 Pontryagin's maximum principle, continuous-time LQR PDF PPTX soon
6 Direct methods (collocation, SCP) PDF PPTX soon
7 Dynamic programming (DP), discrete LQR PDF PPTX soon
8 Nonlinear LQR for tracking and trajectory generation (iLQR, DDP) PDF PPTX soon
9 Stochastic DP, value iteration, policy iteration PDF PPTX soon
10 HJB, HJI, and reachability analysis PDF PPTX soon
11 MPC I: introduction, persistent feasibility PDF PPTX soon
12 MPC II: persistent feasibility (cont’d), stability of MPC, and explicit MPC PDF PPTX soon
13 Intro to learning, system ID, adaptive control PDF PPTX soon
14 Intro to imitation learning and RL PDF PPTX soon
15 Imitation learning PDF PPTX soon
16 RL I: foundations of RL PDF PPTX soon
17 RL II: model-free RL — value-based methods PDF PPTX soon
18 RL III: model-free RL — policy optimization PDF PPTX soon
19 RL IV: model-based RL and conclusions PDF PPTX soon

Exams, homeworks & solutions

To preserve their value as assessments, exams, homework sets, and their solutions are shared privately with instructors rather than posted publicly. If you are teaching a course and would like access, get in touch and tell us a little about your class:

Request instructor materials

Email us with your name, institution, and the course you are teaching, and we will follow up with the available exams, homeworks, and solution sets.

Email us

Adopting the book

We look forward to seeing Principles of Robot Autonomy in your course! If you are adopting the book, please reach out and let us know. We would love to hear about your experience, and we can also help publicize your course on this website.

Acknowledgments

Our beliefs about robot autonomy, and the way we present the material in the book and in these slides, have been largely informed by other excellent courses, textbooks, and lecture materials from across the community. We are deeply grateful to their authors and instructors. If you are building a course, the resources below are wonderful companions to this book.

Courses & lecture materials

Textbooks & notes

  • D. E. Kirk, Optimal Control Theory: An Introduction
  • F. Borrelli, A. Bemporad, M. Morari, Predictive Control for Linear and Hybrid Systems
  • J. B. Rawlings, D. Q. Mayne, M. M. Diehl, Model Predictive Control: Theory, Computation, and Design
  • R. S. Sutton, A. G. Barto, Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction
  • J.-J. E. Slotine, W. Li, Applied Nonlinear Control
  • S. M. LaValle, Planning Algorithms
  • R. Siegwart, I. R. Nourbakhsh, D. Scaramuzza, Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots
  • D. A. Forsyth, J. Ponce, Computer Vision: A Modern Approach
  • R. Hartley, A. Zisserman, Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision
  • R. M. Murray, Optimization-Based Control (lecture notes)

Individual lectures also draw on many excellent surveys and research papers, credited on the slides where they appear.