16-762: Mobile Manipulation (Spring 2026)

Course Info

Time: Monday & Wednesday 3:30 - 4:50 PM
Location: NSH 3002
Instructor: Zackory Erickson
Office Hours: Upon request
Course Questions and Discussion: Slack – Registered students will be added

Course Description

In this course, you’ll learn about mobile manipulation through hands-on experience working with real mobile manipulators. You’ll gain experience with teleoperation, autonomy, perception, navigation, manipulation, and human-robot interaction, all within the context of mobile manipulators.

This course is structured as a hands-on introduction to mobile manipulators. Lectures will provide base concepts on topics in mobile manipulation, followed by in-class lab-style implementations on real-world mobile manipulators. The course will culminate in a final project with a small team on a topic/problem of the students’ choosing that connect many of the mobile manipulation techniques learned throughout the semester.

The primary goal of this course is to provide you with a practical understanding of mobile manipulation in real contexts. Upon successful completion of this course, you should:

  1. Have a practical understanding of perception, action, human-robot interaction, and robot learning for mobile manipulation.
  2. Have hands-on experience in the design of mobile manipulation algorithms that operate in the real world.
  3. Have a stronger grasp on the mobile manipulation research process, including defining goals, developing methodologies, and disseminating results.
  4. Have familiarity with relevant literature and the state-of-the-art.
  5. Have experience identifying problems and tasks that could benefit from mobile manipulation and developing robot manipulation methods that enable robots to perform these tasks.

Pre-Requisites

Prior experience with the Python programming language is encouraged and beneficial.

RCICP