/rse_nanodegree

Robotics software engineer nanodegree from Udacity

Primary LanguageC++

Robotics Software Engineer Nanodegree from Udacity

Udacity - Robotics NanoDegree Program

This repo is a collection of my work to earn a nanodegree from Udacity in Robo tics Software Engineering. The course page with more information and the syllabus is here.

I've always had an offshoot interest in robotics (I almost studied it in college) so this course was an attempt to gain an introduction to the field. In addition, I wanted to learn some C++ and to continue getting more comfortable using Ubuntu and Vim.

Personal Goals

  1. Learn the basics of C++
  2. Learn some algorithms used in robotics, such as SLAM
  3. Get better at Vim
  4. Get more comfortable using Linux

Course Projects

  1. Build My World: introduction to Gazebo.
  2. Go Chase It!: build a robot that chases colored balls.
  3. Where am I?: use Monte Carlo Localization to estimate a robot's position.
  4. Map My World: use RTAB-Map to localize a robot and create 2D and 3D maps of the environment.
  5. Home Service Robot: create a home service robot that will autonomously map an environment and navigate to different locations, picking up and dropping off objects.

Course Highlights

  • My personal favorite project was Go Chase It!. This is largely because it involved the most C++ and I got to learn some OpenCV (which was not required). I also was able to learn some basic image processing, such as thresholding and edge detection.

  • Graph search algorithms like A*

  • Kalman filter and extended Kalman filter

  • FastSLAM

  • Learned a useful grep command for string searching in directories:

    $ grep --recursive "search-term" *

  • Learned about clang-format for formatting C++ files:

    $ clang-format file.cpp -style "google" -i