SFK Robotics Winter Program: Building AI-Enabled Robots with Mini Pupper 2

Mini Pupper 2 Robot

2026 Winter Teaching team:

• Instructor: Javier C. Weddington (Stanford Computational Neuroscience) | LinkedIn
• Head TA: LinLin Liu
• Co-TA: Vicky S.

Overview:

Welcome to the course page for class on legged robots using the Mini Pupper 2 platform! This course offers a hands-on introduction to AI-powered robotics. Unlike most introductory robotics courses, students will learn essential robotics concepts by constructing a Mini Pupper 2 quadruped robot and training it to perform real-world tasks such as navigation and command following. The course covers a broad range of topics critical to robot learning, including motor control, forward and inverse kinematics, system identification, simulation, and reinforcement learning. Through intensive labs, students will construct and program the Mini Pupper 2 robot. In the final days, students will undertake a project demonstrating their robot's capabilities.

Time: December 21, 2025 – January 31, 2026 (Online + Onsite)

Lecture Location: Tonji University Department of Architecture Building , in-person attendance required for onsite phase

Instructor Office Hours:

• Javier: By appointment - contact [email protected]

TA Office Hours Location: Tonji University Department of Architecture Building

TA Office Hours:

• [Head TA]: By Appointment
• [Co-TA]: By Appointment

Prerequisites:

• CAD Design Skills
• Python Programming
• Familiarity with the terminal and command lines)
• understanding of gradients
• No robotics experience necessary!!

Grading: Students will work in assigned groups for all labs and the final project. All group members will receive the same score for each lab. Some labs may include individual written homework, which will be graded separately.

Attendance: Attendance is mandatory for all classes and counts for 3% of your grade. Missing 0-1 classes gives you full credit, missing 2 classes gives you 50%, and missing more than 2 gives you 0%. Students are expected to attend all classes in person. If you are unable to attend a class, please inform the teaching team in advance.

Lab Policies:

Labs: Labs are due before class the beginning of the day before the next lab unless otherwise noted. Each team has a total of 7 late days to use across all labs. It is pertinent for the deliverables to be prompt as it will help the progress of the full project

Final project: No extensions are allowed for the final project proposal, progress report, or final demo video/presentation.

Enrollment: ~24 students; 6 groups of 4-5 students

Schedule

Online Phase (December 21, 2025 – January 18, 2026)

Onsite Phase (January 22–31, 2026)

Total Contact Hours: 10 hours online (Javier) + 10 hours online (SFK) + 20 hours onsite instruction = 30 hours

Software Requirements

All software is open-source and will be installed during the online sessions:

• Ubuntu 22.04 LTS (for Raspberry Pi)
• ROS2 Humble
• Python 3.10+
• Mini Pupper ROS packages (mini_pupper_ros, mini_pupper_description)
• OpenCV 4.x
• PyTorch (for ML components)

International Collaboration Component

References: References Page