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Learner Reviews & Feedback for Introduction to Self-Driving Cars by University of Toronto

4.7
stars
2,791 ratings

About the Course

Welcome to Introduction to Self-Driving Cars, the first course in University of Toronto’s Self-Driving Cars Specialization. This course will introduce you to the terminology, design considerations and safety assessment of self-driving cars. By the end of this course, you will be able to: - Understand commonly used hardware used for self-driving cars - Identify the main components of the self-driving software stack - Program vehicle modelling and control - Analyze the safety frameworks and current industry practices for vehicle development For the final project in this course, you will develop control code to navigate a self-driving car around a racetrack in the CARLA simulation environment. You will construct longitudinal and lateral dynamic models for a vehicle and create controllers that regulate speed and path tracking performance using Python. You’ll test the limits of your control design and learn the challenges inherent in driving at the limit of vehicle performance. This is an advanced course, intended for learners with a background in mechanical engineering, computer and electrical engineering, or robotics. To succeed in this course, you should have programming experience in Python 3.0, familiarity with Linear Algebra (matrices, vectors, matrix multiplication, rank, Eigenvalues and vectors and inverses), Statistics (Gaussian probability distributions), Calculus and Physics (forces, moments, inertia, Newton's Laws). You will also need certain hardware and software specifications in order to effectively run the CARLA simulator: Windows 7 64-bit (or later) or Ubuntu 16.04 (or later), Quad-core Intel or AMD processor (2.5 GHz or faster), NVIDIA GeForce 470 GTX or AMD Radeon 6870 HD series card or higher, 8 GB RAM, and OpenGL 3 or greater (for Linux computers)....

Top reviews

PS

Jul 29, 2021

This is a great course and also a demanding course for future of automobile industry. This course teachs me a lot about the control system of the car which is used in the autonomous control unit.

AP

Jul 27, 2020

This introduction course really helped me recalling all my basic learning. Really appreciate the Professor. It will definitely help me for enhancing my skills in the field of autonomous driving.

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1 - 25 of 558 Reviews for Introduction to Self-Driving Cars

By Sreenithi B

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Feb 24, 2019

Good explanation. But the problem is, the assignments given are way too advanced and the explanation given in the videos, is not clear enough and sufficient to solve the code given in the ipython notebooks.

By Jon H

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Jun 4, 2019

There is no support for this class

The forums are almost useless and no teacher or staff ever answers anything on them

The lectures are pure fluff and hand-waving, no meat and no details

The projects are extremely difficult and there is no lessons to cover material needed for the projects

Would not recommend unless you want to basically learn on your own

Too much work BTW I did get 100%.

By Sri S A G D

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Mar 28, 2019

This is one the best courses that you can find on coursera. This is an ambitious course that has been launched to compete with the udacity's Self driving cars course (atleast that's how I see it) . The instructors are veterans in the field and they some people from the industry (Zoox, Waymo.. etc) to show the big picture. The courses from week 1-3 gives the theoritical introduction about the hardware, software, architectural and safety requirements. Then from the week 4 you can get your hands dirty with application of physics, mathematics in python. ( I had a hard time here) But you'll it if you love learning. It's where all the domains converge from mechanics to programming. I know programming and I started learning the mathematical and physics concepts from other sources. But be informed that the explanation of mechanical concepts is very low as they assume that you posses them. So, if you don't have you will start learning them in parallel with the course.

If you are serious and if you are ready to take the mental work the take the course. It's worth the money and time. All it needs is your hardwork and attention.

By Lefteris L

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Mar 16, 2019

First 3 weeks say about the history, the safety and what is actually a driving plan.

The other 3 weeks go really deep inside physics and mechanical engineering and many people find it hard to follow there, especially if they come from different backgrounds. I come from computer science.

In week 7, they explain the CARLA simulator and they have done a terrific job on that, kudos.

The thing is that through week 4-7, the quizzes and the assignments get really hard and many people say in the forums that find it hard and they needed to be more documented and guidelined, like the Deep Learning Specialization from Andrew Ng, from example.

The course has potential but I think there exists a problem right now when 20-30% of people pass quizzes on the first time. I hope that the team will take that into consideration and edit their resources.

By Ruoqi Z

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Apr 8, 2019

Feeling it's hard for me because I only have CS background and know nothing about automatic control. The knowledge in slides is not so clear for a totally fresh man.

Suggest firstly get the introduction of robotics and automatic control then take this course.

By Ali E

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May 15, 2019

Terrible, total waste of time

By Mohankumar E

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Aug 5, 2020

i am very much enjoyed the course and learned new concepts. Really it is a very nice program and the presentation gives friendly environment to understand the concepts. Thank you

By Gayathri S

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Nov 16, 2020

It really is an involved course for those who are passionate about developing and the control models for the car. Im so proud of my first implementation of Self Driving car using CARLA!!

By Joachim S

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Jun 5, 2019

Excellent first course in the specialization. It was everything I hoped it would be. Personally I would have appreciated if the videos have been longer and therefore going more into details. Currently they are more of a fast-paced walk-through. But this is compensated by providing reading materials for each of the the videos (some of which are either behind a paywall or the link is broken - so a cleanup would be a good idea). There is one programming assigment in week 4 to get you started and a final project in week 7. Trying to implement the material from the videos in the final project required me to go back to the slides and comprehend the concepts shown - exactly what I think makes a good programming exercise: not just filling in the blanks but really relatively small block of code that you need to develop on your own. If you ever get stuck the discussion forums should provide you with all the necessary pointers to resolve any issue. After getting the CARLA simulator working it was fascinating to see your code being used to accelerate/steer your car around a given race track. I definitely recommend this course for everyone interested in starting to build up knowledge in the self driving cars arena.

By Anil K K

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Jun 16, 2019

Great learning experience! I learned about longitudinal and lateral control algorithms, self driving car terminology. The best is the practical sessions in CARLA simulator, it gave me opportunity to apply what is being learned. It really gives much satisfaction and confidence about the topic. Yes, I am looking forward to take the next course. I would like to thank the lecturer and Coursera for giving me this great opportunity to be part of this good learning experience.

By Priyank S

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Jul 5, 2020

Great content, but poorly designed exercises. If it wasn't for the generous people in the discussion forum, this would have been impossible to be solved. The content was relatively easier than the exercises themselves and the amount of python programming experience is much higher than was stated.

By Alex C L

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Aug 10, 2019

Pros: It's overall a very challenging courses. Presented the big picture of this exciting field. Lecture video is concise.

Cons: The material can be structured in a more intuitive way, maybe expand the lecture a little bit, and it'll be really helpful to give one or two simple concrete example every time a new concept or formula was introduced. For me, I need to search all the unfamiliar terms and formulas, and maybe work through a toy example or even write program or plot some data myself in order to understand the material and follow this course.

p.s. I don't have all the prerequisite to take this course (minimal exposure to robotics, can't remember much about physics, I do have machine learning experience, but it is not helpful for this intro course).

By Fadillah M

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Jun 28, 2020

This course is awesome ! This is one of the great courses for you who want to learn about self-driving cars for the first time. The assignments are challenging, especially the final project.

By Yashaswy G

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Sep 2, 2020

A well-rounded introductory course! I would like to take this opportunity to thank the instructors for designing such an amazing course for students aspiring to enter this field.

By Eli H

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Jul 22, 2019

Great course! Made me even more interested in self driving vehicles! I'll definitely continue this specialization and topic in general, as cars and robotics itself :3

By Christian A

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Feb 4, 2019

clear, easy to follow. I would say that needs to speed up a bit

By YATISH S

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Jul 25, 2020

Need more explanations regarding the programming assignments. Struggled a lot with it! Also with the simulator.

By Joe S

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Mar 3, 2020

On the plus side, the course surveys of topics for automatic driving that are a challenge to find well presented elsewhere. The material presented is interesting and well summarized. The negative is that the lectures are extremely short. Worked problems aren´t covered in the lectures or the readings, and insight into the topic seems to have been omitted. (One example: the gear ratio amplifies torque but reduces rotational speed, so that the overall power is constant.) Imagine what they could teach with 15 minutes instead of seven! Further, why aren't the lecture notes included anywhere in the reading. It makes it hard to refer back to them if you have to search a video instead of a powerpoint.

The production quality is professional, but given how thin the content often is, I would prefer they wrote on a white board and filmed using a camera phone, yet delivered more content to the current production.

Finally, I feel I spent more time learning to install the "right" version of python than I did how to control an autonomous vehicle. The reason I mention this is that Python has progressed, but the notes for installation seem to be static. In a regular college course, the course usually improves with the repeating of it, but this course seems frozen in time.

By Daniel J

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Jun 2, 2019

Fantastic course! It assumes participants have some background knowledge in control theory. The programming exercises are a bit difficult as there is a lack of documentation. However, passing them depends on getting intuition on tuning parameters, something essential in the real world. The course also includes research papers and publications in supplementary material. Going through this material is really helpful in gaining additional detailed knowledge about the concepts discussed in the lecture videos

Would definitely recommend this course to anyone trying to get into the AV field.

By Farid I

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Aug 11, 2019

Great content for an Introduction, it has its challenges. I really liked the merge of different topics, such as physics, mechanics and control, as well as safety standards and architecture. It would be cool to see more interaction of participants in the forums. Some of the topics could be explained in more detail, this is part of the challenges to face. However, when accomplishing the practical assessments, you gain confidence on trying different approaches to solve them and not just "by the book"

By zhen l

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Mar 10, 2019

This class puts emphasis on control model. It leaves lots of space in the final project for you to piece together things that may sound dry in the lectures. You need to figure out how to verify your model and logic in corner cases, and how to tune parameters. All these are indispensable and practical when applying theory to practice - an important skills in engineering. Overall a solid and well structured course. Highly recommended.

By Aref A

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Jul 18, 2019

Final project submissions should not be copying final results in a file and submitting it. This way, people can copy final results from somewhere on the internet and pass the course without knowing if they really did the assignment or not. Like this people can not trust the certificate we earn. Generating these yaml files automatically in a grader or something similar is a better way in my opinion.

By Roger Q

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Jul 21, 2019

the materials are presented in a nice way. However, even though it's an introductory class, more programming assignments should be included. In my opinion this should be a more engineering-focused class rather than a theoretical class.

By Neeraj P

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Sep 23, 2019

Very engrossing and interesting course. This is a very intensive course and requires some work on the assignments and projects and hence makes it very satisfying to learn.

By ALI H S

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Apr 14, 2020

This designed content is quite impressive... help me a-lot with my research work..Thanks to Prof. for teaching difficult topics is a way i understand easily.