Explore robot flight and movement and learn how robots adjust their movements to avoid obstacles, navigate difficult terrains and accomplish complex tasks such as construction and disaster recovery.

In this program, you’ll explore real-world examples of how robots have been applied in disaster situations, how they have made advances in human health care, and what their future capabilities will be. The series culminates in a capstone experience in which you will program a robot to perform a variety of movements such as flying and grasping objects.

All courses are 100 percent online, and you can complete them at your own pace. You will receive a specialization certificate if you pay for and complete all six courses.

100% online

6 courses

4-6 weeks

2-5 hours a week

Hosted on Coursera

Specialization Certificate


Courses in This Program

Robotics 1: Aerial Robotics

How can we create agile micro aerial vehicles that can operate autonomously in cluttered indoor and outdoor environments? In this course you’ll explore the mechanics of flight and the design of quadrotor flying robots and learn to develop dynamic models, derive controllers, and synthesize planners for operating in 3D environments.

  • 4 weeks
  • 4 hours per week
  • Self-paced
  • Instructor: Vijay Kumar

Robotics 2: Computational Motion Planning

Robotic systems include three components: a mechanism for exerting forces and torques on the environment, a perception system for sensing the world, and a decision and control system that modulates the robot’s behavior to achieve a particular goal. In this course, you’ll explore how a robot decides what to do to achieve its goals.

  • 4 weeks
  • 3 hours per week
  • Self-paced
  • Instructor: C.J. Taylor

Robotics 3: Mobility

How can robots use their motors and sensors to move around in an unstructured environment? Learn to design robot bodies and behaviors that recruit appendages to apply physical forces that confer reliable mobility in a complex and dynamic world.

Robotics 4: Perception

How can robots perceive the world and their own movements so that they accomplish navigation and manipulation tasks? In this course, you will study how images and videos acquired by cameras mounted on robots are transformed into representations like features and optical flow.

Robotics 5: Estimation and Learning

How can robots determine their state and properties of the surrounding environment from noisy sensor measurements in time? In this course you will learn how to get robots to incorporate uncertainty into estimating and learning from a dynamic and changing world.

  • 4 weeks
  • 3-4 hours per week
  • Self-paced
  • Instructor: Daniel Lee

Robotics 6: Capstone

The six-week Robotics Capstone gives you the opportunity to implement a solution for a real-world problem based on what you’ve learned in the robotics specialization. It also offers a chance to use the mathematical and programming methods that researchers use in robotics labs.

Explore Robotics

Learn the Building Blocks for a Career in Robotics. Gain experience programming robots to perform in situations and for use in crisis management.

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