To: Elena Anoshina

From: Denis Nikitin, 421

Subject: Presentation of the course
Date: 22th December, 2015
The aim of this report is to present the course on Coursera, called Control of Mobile Robots. The
report contains information about the course and the reasons why this course was picked by me.
The course is led by Dr.Magnus Egerstedt, who is a professor in the School of Electrical and
Computer Engineering at the Georgia Tech University. The course consists of 7 weeks, with about 8
lectures in each week, where duration of each lecture is 10 minutes approximately. Also optional
programming, simulation and hardware assembly lectures are provided for each week.
At the beginning of the course basic definitions and main principles of control theory are
considered. Concepts of controllability and observability are discussed. Linearization principle is
considered, as well as it's applicability in real world. PID Controller for Segway robot is derived.
Terms of hybrid automata and robot behaviors are introduced. Solution for obstacle avoidance task
is proposed. At the end, an example of creating a complete navigational system for mobile robot is
given.
Although this course is mostly theoretical, it gives an opportunity to apply the theory. MATLAB
software is used throughout the course to simulate a mobile robot. Also, special hardware assembly
instructions on how to build a mobile robot from scratch are provided.
To sum up, it appears that this course is one of the best courses for investigating how mathematical
control theory is connected with applied robotics.