Robot Software Engineering and Simulation

Engineering robot software that teams can trust: layered architectures and ros2_control, requirements, interfaces and ADRs, coding standards, static analysis and review, the test pyramid with replay and property-based tests, physics engines, time steps and real-time factor, URDF, Xacro and SDF models with measured sensor noise, CI with containers and staged rollout, system identification, domain randomization and hardware-in-the-loop, fleet logging and diagnostics, SROS2 and SBOM security with NIST SP 800-82 and CISA guidance, open-source licensing and the EAR, and a capstone delivery robot pipeline.

ROB-360 Year 3 3 credits 12 lessons · 5 h 46 min

Offered by HSM University · Robotics

This is the American version of this course. See the Canadian version.

What you'll learn

Design layered, component-based robot software architectures, choosing interaction styles, process composition and hardware abstraction with ros2_control
Write verifiable requirements bounded by an operational design domain, plan trial counts for statistical requirements, and maintain interface control documents, ADRs and traceability
Apply coding standards, formatters, linters, static analysis, sanitizers and code review to catch robot software defects early
Build a robot test suite shaped like the test pyramid, using unit, property-based, mock-based, launch_testing and replay tests, and manage coverage and flaky tests
Explain how physics engines integrate dynamics and handle contacts, choose time steps, use simulated time and the real-time factor, and compare simulators
Build robot models and worlds with URDF, Xacro and SDF, with realistic inertia, simple collision geometry, measured sensor noise and scenarios derived from use cases
Set up continuous integration and delivery for ROS 2 with pinned containers, caching, semantic versioning, signed images and staged rollout with rollback
Narrow and measure the reality gap using system identification, domain randomization, hardware-in-the-loop testing and statistical comparison of matched experiments
Design logging, rosbag2 recording, diagnostics, telemetry, alerting, over-the-air updates and reliability metrics for a robot fleet
Threat-model connected robots with STRIDE and apply SROS2, secure boot, SBOMs, network segmentation and least privilege, within Canadian or US regulatory context
Comply with open-source licenses, contribute effectively to open-source communities and recognize when export controls apply
Design and justify a complete software, test, simulation, delivery and operations pipeline for a robot product against measurable requirements

Course content

12 lessons · 5 h 46 min total · final exam

1 Robot software architecture 31 min · quiz
2 Requirements, design and documentation for robot software 29 min · quiz
3 Software quality: coding standards, static analysis and code review 31 min · quiz
4 Testing robot software 27 min · quiz
5 Simulation fundamentals: physics engines, time steps and real-time factor 29 min · quiz
6 Building simulation worlds and robot models 29 min · quiz
7 Continuous integration, containers and deployment 27 min · quiz
8 Hardware-in-the-loop testing and sim-to-real transfer 29 min · quiz
9 Logging, monitoring and fleet operations 29 min · quiz
10 Security for connected robots 25 min · quiz
11 Open-source licensing, community and export controls 29 min · quiz
12 Capstone: the software and simulation pipeline for a delivery robot 31 min · quiz
E Final exam 20 questions

Requirements

Recommended background. You can start any course at any time.

Description

Part of the Science stream, typically taken in year 3.