ECE484
ECE484 (Principles of Safe Autonomy) is a 4-credit-hour course that satisfies the Technical Elective requirement for ECE majors, satisfies an Advanced Computing Elective for CEs, and satisfies a software lab for EEs. It is offered in both fall and spring semesters.
Content Covered
This course is an introduction to the techniques commonly used in the autonomous driving industry. In particular, it dives into algorithms for building autonomous systems (e.g., path planning, particle filtering, lane detection, and safety verification), play with cool software tools (e.g., ROS, Gazebo, OpenAI gym), and get to deploy your code on a real car!
Prerequisites
Other recommended prerequisites are a linear algebra course (e.g, MATH257), a data structures course (CS225), a course on algorithms (ECE/CS374), and a course on differential equations (MATH285).
When to Take It
Although this is a new course, this class is planning to be offered every semester. If you are interested in autonomous driving, this is a great course to take early on in your academic career as the course builds an autonomous driving system from zero. This is also a good course to take after taking ECE313, ECE448/CS440, and ECE486 as it applies concepts from each of those courses into the specific topic of autonomous systems.
Course Structure
Typically, there are MPs due every 2 weeks that will take around 20-25 hours for a team of 2 students. There are typically 6 of these MP assignments throughout the semester. There is also one midterm and a mini project.
Instructors
Typically, the course is taught by Katherine R. Driggs-Campbell in the spring, while Professor Ujjal Bhowmik teaches the course in the fall.
Life After
If you enjoyed the material in this course, Professor David Forsyth teaches CS588 (Autonomous Vehicle System Eng) which is a popular choice for people who do well in this course. In addition, ECE470 is a good choice for people are interested in robotics, motions and planning. Anyone who is more interested with the controls portion of the course would greatly enjoy the content from ECE486 and ECE515. If you want a combination of robotics and controls, you can also take ECE489.