Hello and welcome to the first Programming and Simulation lecture.

I am JP, I am
very excited to introduce the program, programming assignments in this course to
you. Since this course is about controlling mobile robots, the progra, programming
assignments will focus on applying what you learn on the lectures to simulated
mobile robots.Therefore we will be using math lab based robot simulator called
[UNKNOWN], and its important for you to know that the weekly assignments are
entirely optional. Meaning that they do not factor into your course grade however
you have the option to submit each one of the assignments for feedback. Since these
programming exercises are completely optional, let me take a moment to convince you
why they are worth your time and effort. First of all, they are a very unique
opportunity to apply what you learn in this course to a interesting problem. In
this case, it's safely navigating a mobile robot through a cluttered environment
which is a super exciting problem to solve.Second of all, you will learn MATLAB,
which is a very powerful tool for any engineer. And as a bonus, if you build draw
in QuickBot in this, that's built in this course, then everything that you write in
the programming assignments can be directly tested on this robot.
Hopefully, that's enough to convince you to start with the programming assignments,
so let's get started with. Programming assignment number one and the objective for
this first assignment is to get comfortable with MATLAB and to run the simulator at
least once.
We have included detailed instructions for this assignment in a section called
programming assignments and you can find this directly on our course page.
If your not already familiar with MATLAB.
It can best be described as numerical computing environment and a programming
language. Since we will be using MATLAB extensively in this course, and in the
programming assignments. You'll have access to a license of MATLAB for the duration
of the course. In fact, this license won't expire until a few week, weeks after the
course ends, which will be plenty of time to complete all of the assignments.
These detailed installation instructions can be found in the aforementioned
programming assignment section. As well as links to resources for learning the key
MatLab concepts that you're going to be needing, that you're going to need to
complete all of the assignments.
The reason that we're using MATLAB in the programming assignments is that we've
developed a simulator for mobile. Robots in MATLAB. And the simulator emulates the
QuickBot and this robot has a two wheel differential drive, five infrared sensors,
and two wheel encoders. All of the programming assignments are based on the
simulator and they will require you to, for, example, write a go to go controller
for the QuickBot that drives it from point a to point b. And to help you in this
endeavor, we've included a very detailed user manual.
That will help you both implement and test your code.
If you choose to receive feedback on your solutions we've designed a user interface
just for that.
In fact over here is a screenshot of this of this application.
What you do is you enter your submission log in and password, here.
And then you select which parts of the assignment you would like to have graded.
For example, you might want to grade this part, but not this part. So you just
check the first one.
Once you're ready to submit, you hit the submit to Coursera for grading, for
grading button right here. What will happen is that a script will start the
simulator, as well as your code to gather output and compare the output to values
stored on the Coursera servers. If your output matches with, with what is on the
Coursera server, you will get a check mark. And 100% for this part of the
assignment. If it does not, you will get an x.
And that means you've gotten 0% credit for this part of the assignment. However,
don't worry. You will get feedback about what you might want to change in order to
get the correct solution. And you may resubmit as many times as you want until you
get a hundred percent on all of the parts. Just remember that the points earned in
this assignment will not count towards your grade, but this is really a great
opportunity to get some feedback on your solutions. So let's see all that in action
in MATLAB. This is MATLAB. Here you see the command window, and to my left is the
current folder. What I've done is I've downloaded the zip with the simulator for
this week. And I've unzipped it and browsed to this location. Here are all the
files for the simulator. If you want to launch the simulator you simply type launch
into the command window and hit enter.
This brings up the simulator, along with this cute swatch screen, swatch screen
right here. Along with a few instructions on how to use the simulator.
When you hit play. The simulation starts. You can see the quick boat in the center,
and I can zoom in and zoom out using these buttons.
As you can see the quick boat has two wheels, and five infrared sensors. These
infrared sensors in blue are not detecting any obstacles, but the ones in red are
detecting this red obstacle right here.
We can also pen around and see that there are several other obstacles. For example,
these walls over here in the environment.
Any time you click on the robot the robot will be centered on the screen for you.
You can also pause and resume the simulation at any time. Or restart the entire,
entire simulation by clicking on the home button.
Once you're ready to submit, you type in submit.
This will bring up the submission window.
Again, here are, is the login and password for, for the submission on Coursera.
This week's assignment only has one part to it which is to run the simulator.
But on other weeks you might have up to three different parts to complete. Once I
hit submit to Coursera for grading, the simulator should pop up.
And then close, close again because the entire assignment was just to run the
simulator once. And as you can see, I've done that, so I've gotten a check mark and
100% for this assignment. If you have any questions, issues, bugs, or concerns,
please create a post in the discussion forums under the programming assignments
section. And make sure to include enough information for us and fellow students to
help you out. And with that, I wish you good luck.