Curriculum

Phase 1:

• Lab 0: Assemble your Car
• Lab 1: Driving
• Lab 2: Color Images
• Lab 3: Depth Images
• Phase 1 Challenge: Cone Slalom

Phase 2:

• Lab 4: LIDAR
• Lab 5: AR Markers
• Final Challenge

Bonus Labs:

• Bonus Lab 1: Inertial Measurement
• Bonus Lab 2: Sensor Fusion

About the Course

The RACECAR-MN curriculum is designed as an introductory course in robotics for students with some programming experience. Each lab consists of a lecture, an exploration component, and a series of hands-on challenges. These labs grow in complexity, beginning with basic tasks such as driving in shapes and building to important concepts in robotics including SLAM, sensor fusion, and path planning.

This course also serves as a tutorial to the RACECAR-MN platform. By working through the course, students will gain familiarity with the RACECAR-MN hardware and racecar libraries.

Intended Audience

This course is primarily aimed toward students at the middle or high school level with some familiarity with the basics of Python. Students and instructors do not need to have any prior experience with robotics.

Instructors

If you are an instructor interested in teaching this curriculum, you should visit our instructor-only repository at https://github.com/MITLLRacecar/Instructor. This repository contains materials specifically designed for instructors teaching or contributing to this course, including lab solutions and PowerPoint source files for the lecture slides.