ME495 Embedded Systems in Robotics Schedule
Description
Welcome to the lecture notes for ME495: Embedded Systems in Robotics, a core course for Northwestern University's Master of Science in Robotics Program!
This page has the schedule for a 10 week course. The notes are also organized by topic.
2025 Schedule
The schedule below is for Fall 2025
Homework
- Guidelines
- Homework 1 (Issued 09/15/2025. Due 09/30/2025, 11:59 pm.)
- Homework 2 (Issued 09/30/2025. Due 10/21/2025, 11:59 pm.)
Day 1: Tuesday 9/16/2025: Introduction
- Course syllabus is available on canvas
- Tutorial: ROS Beginner CLI Tools
- MSR Honor Code
- Citation Rules
- Preliminaries
- About ROS
- Basics
- Homework 1
Day 2: Thursday 9/18/2025: ROS 2 Basics
- Tutorial: Beginner: Client Libaries (Just the python versions)
- Basics
- ROS Client Libraries
- Colcon
- Demonstration Code
Day 3: Tuesday 9/23/2025: No Class
Day 4: Thursday 9/25/2025: Launchfiles, Custom Interfaces, Async
Day 5: Tuesday 9/30/2025: Transforms
Day 6: Thursday 10/2/2025: No Class
- Goal: to complete the following activities
- Tf Activity
- URDF Activity (just the URDF part not the Xacro part)
- The following notes may be helpful conceptually:
- Transforms
- Modeling Robots (no Xacro-related items yet)
- The following tutorials may also be useful:
- Tutorial: Tf2 Tutorial (Just 1-5, in Python)
- Tutorial: URDF Tutorial (specifically building a visual model and building a movable model).
Day 7: Tuesday 10/7/2025: URDF and Xacro
Day 8: Thursday 10/9/2025: Visualization and Python Launchfiles
2024 Schedule
The schedule below is for Fall 2024
Office Hours
- Monday 3-4pm
- Friday 11-12pm
Lab Days
Class on 11/07/2024 will be in the lab. Please make sure to setup the Franka Workspace on your computer.
Homework
- Guidelines
- Homework 1 (Issued 09/24/2024. Due 10/08/2024.)
- Homework 2 (Issued 10/08/2024. Due 10/29/2024.)
- Homework 3 (Issued 10/29/2024. Due 11/19/2024.)
- Checkpoints:
- 11/07/2024: Part I Complete
- 11/12/2024: Part II Basic Functionality Integrated
- Homework 4 (Issued 11/14/2024. Due 12/03/2024.)
Final Project
- Final Project Proposal : (Issued 10/31/2024. Due 11/14/2024)
- Presentations: 12/12/2024: 12pm - 2pm. In the lab.
- Final Git Repository and Group Peer Evaluation: Due 12/12/2024 at 11:59 pm
Day 1: Tuesday 9/24/2024: Introduction
- The course syllabus is available on canvas
- MSR Honor Code
- Citation Rules
- Preliminaries
- About ROS
- Basics
- Homework 1
Day 2: Thursday 9/26/2024: ROS 2 Basics
Day 3: Tuesday 10/1/2024: Launchfiles, Services, Async
Day 4: Thursday 10/3/2024: Pubsub Activity
Day 5: Tuesday 10/8/2024: Transform Tree (TF)
Day 5a: Thursday 10/10/2024: Self-guided Activities
Day 6: Tuesday 10/15/2024: Modeling Robots
Day 7: Thursday 10/17/2024: Python Launchfiles and Markers
- First, a little bit of xacro
- Python Launchfiles
Day 8: Tuesday 10/22/2024: Design, Documentation, Testing
- VSCode Ament Flake8
- This link is provided for convenience only. The use and configuration of text editors is beyond the scope of this class.
- Visualization
- Markers Example
- Design, Documentation, Testing
Day 9: Thursday 10/24/2024: Gazebo Simulation
Day 10: Tuesday 10/29/2024: ROS and Gazebo
Day 11: Thursday 10/31/2024: MoveIt Halloween
Day 13: Thursday 11/07/2024: In Lab Intro To franka
Day 14: Tuesday 11/12/2024: ROS Image Pipeline
- Discussion of MoveIt and approaches to Homework 3 Part II
- Basics: Actions
- Computer Vision
Day 15: Thursday 11/14/2024: ROS Image Pipeline
Day 16: Tuesday 11/19/2024: Lab Day
Go over projects and get some lab time.