The final project is designed to let students spread their wings and apply the learned skills in an area of interest to them while digging deeper into the concepts. Your project does not need to use real robot hardware, but there are options to get hardware for this class, and you are encouraged to investigate a problem that will control something in the real world. Each project will start with a proposal that will ensure the right scope for each project. The projects will be in groups of 2 or 3 students. However, a few examples are given below to provide some ideas on the scope.

• Re-implement a method in a new deep-learning framework
• Re-implement a method in a paper that did not release code (shame on them)
• Choose a robot to get and train a model to make it solve a task, like walking.
• Investigate a new method that improves exploration
• Investigate a new method for learning an improved representation for learning and exploration.
• Study Sim2Real by learning and transferring policies to another simulation or real robot hardware.
• Perform a literature review of Sim2Real papers.

One of the broad goals of the class project is also to refine your skills at defining reasonable projects that can be completed and are of sufficient quality.

Real Robot Hardware

In order to use real hardware for your class project, you need to include the requested hardware in the project proposal. The course has money allocated to purchase hardware for projects.

Some robot ideas for projects

• Hexapod
• iRobot
• PiCrwaler
• Locobot
• ReactorX150 arm

Grading:

• Students will be graded together but may receive different grades