This Specialization provides a rigorous treatment of spatial motion and the dynamics of rigid bodies, employing representations from modern screw theory and the product of exponentials formula. Students with a freshman-level engineering background will quickly learn to apply these tools to analysis, planning, and control of robot motion. Students' understanding of the mathematics of robotics will be solidified by writing robotics software. Students will test their software on a free state-of-the-art cross-platform robot simulator, allowing each student to have an authentic robot programming experience with industrial robot manipulators and mobile robots without purchasing expensive robot hardware. It is highly recommended that Courses 1-6 of the Specialization are taken in order, since the material builds on itself.
AC
This is the place to start your journey into robotics. But stick to the entire 6 courses. This course is about laying out the basics so don't expect making robots straightaway. All the best!
EH
Great Course. You need to read the related chapters with great focus to pass the course.
PN
Good course. Providing learners academic knowledge, programming skill, and using state of the art software.
AC
The Programming assignments are quite challenging but enjoyable at the same time. Learned a lot from this course.
JZ
I like this course and the way is presented. I think, however, that discussion forums could be better attended by the instructors and mentors.
JS
Probably the best specialization I've done so far. I wish there were more programs like this!
SK
I think building the foundation strong is very much required and the planning of starting it with basic concept of D.O.F could greatly help.
UA
The Course is not overloaded, easy to follow with the accompanying book and videos.
JZ
Interesting course, it helps a lot in understanding and applying the material in the textbook.
JM
Really liked this class. More challenging than the typical Coursera fare.
MS
It was a hard one , Yet very helpful and challenging
HL
A really amazing and exhaustive course. Covers everything you need to know about robotics especially from a Mechanical Engineering point of view.
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Good course, very heavy on theory with little to no example problems. Its good to teach theory but should be followed up with multiple real world problem to solve by hand or code.
Explanations are not clear. I had to get back to my old mechanic books to fully understand the content of the course. As it doesn't show how to apply what you learn it is boring and useless to me. Not worth the money at all.
More example exercises. Chapter 3 was very poor at having enough example exercises, and the discussion went deep too fast before showing more examples. The videos should be longer with more explanation of the theory. There are several exercises at the end of the chapter, but before solving those, more examples would be good.
On Youtube, you can find videos that explain a lot more than what is available on the course. The difference is that Youtube is free, and this Course is paid to get the certificate. 2-5min videos clearly are not enough. Any lecture should be is at least an 30-60min long. Relying just on the theory of the book to learn can be very difficult!
The video lectures and the book should complement each other, but this course puts all of the onus of passing the knowledge solely on the book.
This is the place to start your journey into robotics. But stick to the entire 6 courses. This course is about laying out the basics so don't expect making robots straightaway. All the best!
I went up to course 5 out of 6 and I was at the end of course 5 and GOT NO HELP FROM NOBODY, no tutor, no professor, no student to help, give a hint. So, I abandoned the Specialisation. It's outrageous.
I wish there was a bit more explanation of some of the equations and derivations. Sometimes the textbook just skips to the final equation, and does not show how it got there. It would be nice if the videos showed the derivation, as opposed to just the equations.
The overall quality of the course is good, but there were a couple of issues which were a bit unsatisfactory.
For example, I didn't find the videos very engaging and helpful, but rather bland. Professor Lynch simply reads through a prepared text (which is in the background) and gives you an overview of the concepts which I found quite hard to follow. So you need to read the supplied book which, on the other hand, is very clear and rigorous. Thus you may completely ignore the videos, or just refer to them as a wrap-up.
Plus 5 points for course content: nice to see a course that isn't afraid of using some mathematics. Very well presented. Minus 2 points for use of peer review for grading. While that might be defensible for a completely free MOOC, it is really unacceptable for a paid course. Take the $$$ you are receiving and pay a TA to develop some better automated quizzes or code review bots, and get rid of the ridiculous and tedious peer reviews.
The course is not well structured at all. The videos are crisp, sure, but it takes several hours of studying from the book (and other sources too!) just to meet the expectations.
The videos convey not much, and so, the whole course is about reading the books and trying to get through the quiz.
And I don't know about the others, but I found the quiz to be extremely tough (though exhaustive).
Not to mention the several prerequisites that need to be met before even starting the course, which saps away bit of motivation.
All in all, not a typical Coursera course. I have never had to leave a course mid-way before, but I just can't be spending so much time (and money) anymore.
One of the best courses I have ever taken. The textbook really helps with understanding concepts.
Can't wait to finish the remaining courses and get my specialization
Could add more material to help with certain mathematical constructs.
it was good intro to the field of robotics. this course has intrigued my interest to learn further in the area of robotics. I would recommend this course for aspiring roboticist
Awful. It is just a glimpse of a course.
It's a great course but it need to make more detalied video
beyond me.
Really well structured and organized. The material can be slightly overwhelming at times because of the concepts, but once you get a hang of it, it becomes much better!
The information in the videos are too little and lacks good example
the course need more solved examples
I thank both NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY and COURSERA for providing such an wonderfull course, please do this if you want to pursue your career in the field of robotics, and also the professors answer your doubts regularly, so do not think you wont have support, they are really sweet and YES 5 starts are less for this course : )
Very Engineering driven course and you better be ready for the calculations... Made for Engineers.
Coming from an Electrical/Electronic background it was really intuitive. I plan on continuing...
very fundamental course for robotics & it covers all the basics you need to start in robotics field.
thank you Dr Kevin Lynch & Dr Frank Park.