CS 6751

Robot Manipulation

Course Description

Course information provided by the 2026-2027 Catalog.

Robot manipulation is the ability for a robot to interact physically with objects in the world and manipulate them towards completing a task. It is one of the greatest technical challenges in robotics, due primarily to the interplay of uncertainty about the world and clutter within it. As robots become integrated into complex human environments, robot manipulation is increasingly necessary to assist humans in these unstructured environments. Robotic manipulation will enable applications like personal assistant robots in the home and factory worker robots in advanced manufacturing. This course is a mixture of lectures and paper presentations and covers the fundamental theory, concepts, and systems of robot manipulation, including both software and hardware. Topics we will cover this semester include perception, state estimation, robot arm kinematics and dynamics, task and motion planning, machine learning, controls, human-robot interaction towards various robot manipulation tasks. The course features a semester-long group project in which students propose, formalize, and execute a working robotic manipulation system towards a real-world task. The scope of possible components is quite broad and extends beyond traditional robotics issues into other aspects of CS. This course is offered to prepare a student for Ph.D. research in robot manipulation. Graduate standing or permission of the instructor is required. Proficiency in C++ or Python and familiarity with ROS is required.

Prerequisites background equivalent to: MAE 4180 or CS 4750 or CS 5750 or MAE 4760 or ECE 4770.

Enrollment Information Enrollment limited to: Computer Science graduate and professional students; others by permission of the instructor.

Last 4 Terms Offered 2025SP, 2024SP, 2022SP, 2018SP

Learning Outcomes

• Apply research papers on robot manipulation topics and be able to approach problems in robot manipulation.
• Contribute to the robotics research literature, especially research pertaining to robot manipulation.
• Summarize fundamental principles forming the basis of various robotics disciplines: perception, kinematics, dynamics, learning, controls, grasping, planning, and human-robot interaction - all towards robot manipulation applications.
• Apply principles of robotic systems design, and be able to analyze trade-offs in such designs.
• Integrate various sub-fields of robotics towards developing a real robotic system that can perform intelligent tasks in the real world.

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