Pilot course for Robotics 101: Computational Linear Algebra

Robotics 101: Computational Linear Algebra

Computational Linear Algebra is a pilot first-semester, first-year undergraduate course that shows how mathematics and computation are unified for reasoning about data and making discoveries about the world.

This course ran in Fall 2020 at the University of Michigan Robotics Institute.

Engineering math education is stuck in the Sputnik era: we force students to do four semesters of calculus before they can do anything interesting in engineering. ROB 101 seeks to break through with new ideas. Students will see how engineers are using mathematics and computing to solve large and important problems. Students will still do drill problems to firm up concepts with teeny tiny problems with two or three variables, but they will also solve problems in the Julia programming language with hundreds of variables.

Students will have a palpable understanding that computation and mathematics are friends, instead of hoops to be jumped through on the way to a degree.

Lecture videos

All lecture videos are available on YouTube:
ROB 101 Lecture Videos

And lecture notes here.

Textbook

The textbook, Notes for Computational Linear Algebra, continues to be updated.

Projects

Three main projects that accompany the course are available here.

Course Plan

Credits

• Chad Jenkins, Associate Director of Undergraduate Programs, Michigan Robotics
• Jessy Grizzle, Director, Michigan Robotics
• Maani Ghaffari, Assistant Professor, Naval and Marine Architecture, U-M
• Kira Biener
• Tribhi Kathuria
• Madhav Achar
• Fangtong (Miley) Liu
• Shaoxiong Yao
• Eva Mungai
• Bruce JK Huang
• Grant A. Gibson
• Oluwami Dosunmu-Ogunbi
• Lu Gan
• Ray Zhang

For more

• ROB 101 Course Information for those at U-M
• University of Michigan Robotics Institute
• Michigan Robotics Twitter
• Michigan Robotics Instagram