5023 Technical Paper Assignments

As discussed in the syllabus and in class, those students taking the "grad version" of the course (5023), as opposed to the "undergrad version" (4023), are required to do additional assignments. Those assignments involve choosing a topic, writing a paragraph describing that topic, doing a literature search and turning in a list of references, writing summaries of appropriate technical papers found, making comparisons between these papers, evaluating the appropriateness of the methods discussed for a robot tour guide, giving a presentation on one of the methods reviewed, and providing feedback to one another on your reviews and presentations. Students not taking this version of the course do not need to complete these assignments.

Topic Paragraph

The first step in this assignment is to determine your topic. The topic may be any topic covered in the assigned chapters of the course textbook (Springer Handbook of Robotics, Second Edition, Bruno Siciliano and Oussama Khatib (editors), 2016, Springer). In addition, you may consider topics from the following chapters: 15, 33–34, 69, 71–72, 74–78.

Once you have decided on a topic, you are to write a paragraph describing, in your own words, the topic you have selected. (If you are unclear as to what it means to described something "in your own words," please read OU’s academic integrity website, particularly the documents related to plagiarism.) The point of your writing this paragraph is to ensure that you have looked at your proposed topic in enough depth to make a topic selection appropriate for your work in this course.

Your topic paragraph should be approximately 100-200 words in length. (This is a guideline range. Values somewhat outside this range are acceptable. However, if you go much over 200 words, I may take off points for being excessively verbose.) You should submit an electronic copy of your topic paragraph through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Friday, 27 August 2021.

References

The second step in this assignment is to conduct a literature search to find publications describing two different approaches to the topic you have chosen. (Actually, you could conduct part or all of this literature search while determining your topic. However, you are not required to turn in your list of references until after you have turned in your topic paragraph, so you may conduct the literature search second.) The approaches you decide to cover may include those discussed in the textbook (for example, if you have chosen the topic "system control," you could decide to cover the subsumption approach which is discussed in your textbook). However, at least one of the two approaches should not be discussed in detail (although it may be discussed briefly) in your textbook.

You will need to find at least one publication describing each approach. The exact number of publications you use is up to you to determine. If you find a single publication that describes an approach in sufficient detail for you to get a good understanding of how it works, that one publication is sufficient. If you discover that the one publication you have found on an approach is insufficient for you to understand that approach, however, then you'll need to find more publications on that approach or move on to another approach.

The publications you use must be refereed technical publications. These include conference papers and journal articles (whether published in print or on the web) but not popular sources such as magazines (e.g., Discover Magazine) or un-refereed sources (such as most web sites, even for departments or labs). Note that preprint servers such as arXiv are not refereed and therefore papers distributed solely through such servers do not meet the criteria for these assignments.

Moreover, conferences or journals used should be professional conferences or journals, rather than student conferences or journals. It is okay if some of the authors of your selected publications are students—they often are in professional publications! However, the conference or journal should be one in which professionals regularly publish. If you are in doubt about a possible source, you should check with me before using it.

Turn in complete citations for these two approaches. Here are guidelines for what a complete citation includes.

• For journals:
  • A complete citation must include:
    • article title,
    • author name(s),
    • name of journal,
    • pages, and
    • year.
  • If available, the following should also be included:
    • volume,
    • number and/or month, and
    • URL and access date,
    • DOI.
• For conference, symposium, or workshop proceedings:
  • A complete citation must include:
    • article title,
    • author name(s),
    • conference title,
    • pages, and
    • year.
  • If available, DOI should also be included.
  • If available, the following may also be included:
    • editor,
    • volume or number,
    • month,
    • location of the conference,
    • primary sponsoring organization(s),
    • publisher, and
    • URL and access date.

  Note that increasing numbers of publications do not include page numbers. In such cases, your citation should include the number of pages.

  How much of this optional information you include for a proceedings is a judgment call. You should make this decision based on how well-known the event is. If you don’t know how well-known an event is, err on the side of providing too much information, rather than too little. In general, provide as much information as possible for workshops as well as for conferences and symposia in their first few years.

  You may choose any standard reference format for your references. However, you must format all of your references consistently.

You should submit an electronic copy of your references through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Friday, 3 September 2021.

Draft Review 1

The third step is to select one of the two approaches for which you have found publications, and write a review of it. The review will have three components:

1. Approach Summary. You are to write a summary that includes the main ideas behind the approach. This summary does not need to compare this approach to any other. However, it should be detailed enough that a reader familiar with different approaches to the same topic should be able to recognize that the approach you are summarizing is, in fact, different.

   The approach summary will include these points:

   1. The domain/application.
   2. The problem to be solved or question to be answered.
   3. The motivation for solving this problem or answering this question and what novel robotics components (concepts, software, hardware, etc.) are involved.
   4. The hypothesis.
   5. The approach and methodology.
   6. The experiment(s).
   7. The results.
   8. The conclusions.
   9. Future work.

   Please Note: Taking the first line or two from each paragraph in a paper, stringing them together, and changing around a few words here or there to make things read better, is NOT a summary. It is plagiarism—a form of academic misconduct. Any time you quote a source, you must include the quotation in quotation marks and clearly indicate the source of the quotation. If you find yourself with more than a couple of brief quotes in each summary, then you are quoting too much. To summarize a paper, you need to (1) read it, (2) understand it, and (3) briefly relate its main points in your own words. If you don't have your own words to describe the approach, that probably means that you don't understand the paper—you'll need to go back to steps 1 and 2 and visit me during office hours as needed to help you with step 2. (I don't expect most students to have problems understanding the difference between a summary and plagiarism. This message is for those few who do.) Again, if you don't understand what it means to describe something "in your own words," please read the OU’s academic integrity website, particularly the documents related to plagiarism.

   The summary should run from 3 to 4 pages in length at roughly 80 characters per line, 25 lines per page. (Again, this is a guideline range. Values somewhat outside this range are acceptable. However, if you go much over 4 pages, I may take off points for being excessively verbose.)

2. Internal Evaluation. Once you have summarized the approach, you should give an internal critical evaluation of it. The term 'internal' here is meant to indicate that the evaluation is of one approach, not a comparison between approaches. Also, the term 'critical' here does not mean negative. Rather, it means, like any good critic, you should thoroughly evaluate the approach, in a principled way, and give your best judgment as to its strengths and weaknesses. The critical evaluation is worth one third of the review points and should be extensive.

   Your internal evaluation should contain the following components:

   Criteria by which you evaluate the approach.

   You should choose several criteria that are appropriate for evaluating this approach. (In general, six to eight criteria should be sufficient although you could certainly have more.) These criteria could come from many sources such as the paper itself, related papers from the literature, your textbooks for this course (don’t overlook Chapter 3 of Writing for Computer Science), and from your knowledge of computer science, engineering, mathematics, or related fields. They could also include more general criteria such as originality/novelty of the approach, contributions to the field, empirical and theoretical results, correctness, and completeness.

   
   

   Justification for these criteria.

   You should briefly justify your selection of each criterion with regard to the topic of the paper being reviewed.

   
   

   An evaluation of the approach with respect to each criterion.

   You should give your own evaluation, either positive or negative, of the approach with respect to each criterion. Be sure to justify your evaluation by referring to information found within, or derivable from, the paper(s) describing the approach. Note that, even if you choose to use criteria from the paper being reviewed, your evaluation of the approach with respect to those criteria may differ from the evaluation given by the authors of the papers you are reviewing.

   
   

   NOTE: The internal evaluation is an evaluation of the approach, not an evaluation of the presentation of the material or of the quality of the research conducted. For example, if you explain that the approach is (or isn't) efficient with respect to time or space, that is an evaluation of the approach and would likely be appropriate for your review. If, on the other hand, you explain that the paper is (or isn't) well organized, that is an evaluation of the presentation of the material. It is okay to note presentation issues in passing but they should not be the focus of your review. Similarly, if you explain that the experiments in the paper were not repeated sufficiently many times to obtain statistically meaningful results, that is an evaluation of the quality of the research conducted. It might be important to note such issues as they effect your ability to judge with respect to other criteria (e.g., it might be difficult to know if an approach is effective in such as case) but such issues should not be considered evaluation criteria on their own.

   The internal evaluation should run from 3 to 4 pages in length at roughly 80 characters per line, 25 lines per page. (Again, this is a guideline range.)

3. Application Evaluation. In addition to the internal evaluation, you should give a critical evaluation of the approach with regard to its use on a tour guide robot. Think of the kinds of characteristics the approach should have and discuss whether the approach in question has these characteristics and to what degree. You should include both your reasoning and your conclusion as to how suitable the approach is for the mission of being a tour guide.

   The application evaluation should run from 3 to 4 pages in length at roughly 80 characters per line, 25 lines per page. Again, this is a guideline range.)

You should submit an electronic copy of your first draft review through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Monday, 20 September 2021.

Draft Slides

The fourth step is to prepare draft slides for your in-class presentation of the approach you covered in your first review.

• Each presentation will be 12 minutes long with 3 minutes for questions and answers.
• You should use no more than 12 slides during your talk (although you may prepare additional slides for use during the question and answer period).
• Each review presentation will cover the same three components as your written review:
  1. Approach Summary,
  2. Internal Evaluation, and
  3. Application Evaluation.
• Make the slides high-contrast. (No white letters on a pink background or vice versa.)
• Keep each slide simple. Limit each slide to a few list items, one equation (or two very simple equations), a simple figure, or a table with very few columns and rows. There is no need to try to put your entire paper on a slide or to try to spell everything out in great detail. You will be talking and can provide sufficient detail with what you say. The slides should be for main points only. Allowing the slides to ramble on and on, or to contain excessive repetition, or other similar problems, will only detract from their usefulness. While I am grading you on your slides, I don't need them to explain the whole of your paper to me. I have your paper for that. The purpose of your slides is to support your talk. Blah, blah, blah. Do you get the feeling this is getting longer and longer but not saying anything more? Well, okay then; do not make your slides like this paragraph. Make them like the opening sentence or two, which had all of the points without all of the words.
• Have an overview slide near the start of your talk and a review or summary slide near the end.
• If you use colors, use them for important points only. They should not distract your audience.
• For additional ideas on how to give a good presentation, see my presentation on how to give a good technical presentation.

You should submit an electronic copy of your draft slides before class through Canvas. Acceptable electronic formats include OpenDocument Presentation (.odp), <1!--OpenOffice.org 1.0 Presentation (.sxi),--> Microsoft PowerPoint 97/2000/XP (.ppt), Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 (.pptx), and Portable Document Format (.pdf). You may also use Keynote (.knt) if you will give your presentation using your own computer. Due: 11:59 pm, Monday, 27 September 2021.

Review 1 Feedback

The fifth step is to review the first draft tech paper reviews of three of your classmates, to provide them with feedback that they can use to improve their tech paper reviews. You will be assigned to review draft reviews via Canvas and you should use the rubric present in Canvas for this review.Due: 11:59 pm, Monday, 4 October 2021.

Tech Slides Feedback

The sixth step is to review the draft slides of three of your classmates, to provide them with feedback that they can use to improve their presentations. You will be assigned to review draft slides via Canvas and you should use the rubric present in Canvas for this review. Due: 11:59 pm, Friday, 15 October 2021.

Final Slides

The seventh step is to revise your draft slides for your in-class presentation based on the feedback you received from your classmates, to get them into their final form. The final slides will have all of the same parts and will be the same length as the draft slides. They will simply be a better version of the draft. In addition, your final slides will be accompanied by brief explanations of how your final slides address each the shortcomings noted in the feedback you received on your draft slides. You should submit an electronic copy of your final slides in the evening before class through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Monday, 25 October 2021.

Review Presentation

The eighth step is to actually present your review to the class. As stated previously, each presentation will be 12 minutes long with 3 minutes for questions and answers. I may call on you to give your presentation on Wednesday, 27 October 2021; or Friday, 29 October 2021. I will not announce the exact presentation schedule ahead of time. This means that you will need to attend class all of these days and be ready to present when called on. You will not be graded on your actual speaking (except that you will lose points if you fail to give a presentation). The presentation grading will be for the slides. As stated above (under "Final Slides," you will need to turn in the final draft of your slides for grading on Monday, 25 October 2021.

Final Review 1

The ninth step is to revise your first draft review, based on the feedback you have received from your peers. The final review will have all of the same parts and will be the same length as the draft review. It will simply be a better version of the draft. In addition, your final review will be accompanied by brief explanations of how your final review addresses each the shortcomings noted in the feedback you received on your draft review. You should submit an electronic copy of your review through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Monday, 1 November 2021.

Draft Review 2

The tenth step is to review the other approach that you selected for your topic. This review will have all of the same components as the first review. See the description of that review for details. You should submit an electronic copy of your second draft review through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Monday, 8 November 2021.

Review 2 Feedback

The eleventh step is to review the second draft tech paper reviews of three of your classmates, to provide them with feedback that they can use to improve their tech paper reviews. You will be assigned to review draft reviews via Canvas and you should use the rubric present in Canvas for this review. Due: 11:59 pm, Friday, 19 November 2021.

Final Review 2

The twelfth and final step is to revise your second draft review, based on the feedback you have received from your peers. The final review will have all of the same parts and will be the same length as the draft review. It will simply be a better version of the draft. In addition, your final review will be accompanied by brief explanations of how your final review addresses each the shortcomings noted in the feedback you received on your draft review. You should submit an electronic copy of your review through Canvas. Due: 11:59 pm, Wednesday, 1 December 2021.