Cognitive Robotics
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this advanced course on programming autonomous, cognitive robots for real-world deployment. Starting from familiar programming paradigms, the syllabus adds capabilities incrementally: self-monitoring for observable and hidden faults, task scheduling over time, plan generation to reach goals, reasoning under uncertainty and risk, handling continuous state spaces, and coordinating with other autonomous agents. The course builds toward a robust intelligent system rather than treating each topic as a standalone unit. Materials come from MIT's Aeronautics and Astronautics and Electrical Engineering and Computer Science departments and include lecture notes and problem sets covering the algorithms behind each new reasoning capability. No certificate is offered, but all course materials are free to access under MIT OpenCourseWare's license. The course suits students who already have a programming background and want to see how classical robotics control evolves into deliberative, goal-directed autonomy.