EE · Fall 2025 · Graduate

Introduction to Robot Learning

A practical bridge between robotics, machine learning, perception, planning, and intelligent decision-making.

Course Overview

Robot learning sits at the intersection of robotics and artificial intelligence. This course introduces the essential concepts needed to understand modern robot-learning literature, from coordinate transforms and kinematics to planning, simultaneous localization and mapping, reinforcement learning, and 3D perception. Programming assignments and a team project connect these ideas to working robot systems.

Instructor
Prof. Nuri Kim
Term
Fall 2025
Meetings
Tuesday
18:00–20:30
Classroom
Engineering Building 7
Room 329

Learning Objectives

Robotics foundations

  • Represent rigid-body motion with coordinate transformations.
  • Analyze forward and inverse kinematics for robot manipulators.
  • Understand simulation, path planning, and robot perception pipelines.
  • Connect sensor-based and visual SLAM to autonomous operation.

Learning and implementation

  • Formulate sequential decision problems using reinforcement learning.
  • Implement and evaluate deep reinforcement-learning agents.
  • Read recent robot-learning papers and identify open limitations.
  • Integrate perception, planning, and control in a team robot project.

Recommended background: Python programming, linear algebra, probability, and introductory machine learning.

Schedule

Part I
Robot Foundations
W01Introduction to Robot LearningArchive
W02Coordinate TransformsArchive
W03Forward KinematicsArchive
W04Inverse KinematicsArchive
Part II
Research & Project
W05No Lecture · Conference
W06No Lecture · Holiday
W07Invited Talk · World Models for Robotics and Physical AIGuest
W08No Lecture · Conference
W09Midterm PresentationProject
Part III
Autonomy & Learning
W10Introduction to Robot SimulationsArchive
W11Planning MethodsArchive
W12Sensor-Based SLAMArchive
W13Visual SLAMArchive
W14Reinforcement LearningArchive
W153D Reconstruction MethodsArchive
W16Final PresentationProject

This page records the Fall 2025 offering. Course files remain available to enrolled students through the JBNU LMS.

Coursework

Assignment 1

Ubuntu & ROS 2 Setup

Prepare the Ubuntu 24.04 and ROS 2 Jazzy development environment.

Assignment 2

Simulation & Planning

Work with a simulated manipulator and implement motion-planning components.

Assignment 3

Deep Reinforcement Learning

Train a DQN agent for CartPole and an A3C agent for Atari Pong.

Team Project · Robot Drawing

Midterm presentation

Review three recent papers and present a focused project proposal.

Final deliverables

Demonstrate the robot system, present the methodology and results, and submit an academic-style report of at least four pages.

Midterm Presentation
30%
Final Presentation
30%
Assignments
30%
Attendance
10%

Resources

  • Course platformJBNU LMS
  • DevelopmentUbuntu 24.04 · ROS 2 Jazzy · Python · PyTorch
  • ReferenceShuuji Kajita et al., Introduction to Humanoid Robotics
  • ReferenceRichard Hartley and Andrew Zisserman, Multiple View Geometry in Computer Vision
  • Contactnuri.kim@jbnu.ac.kr