Executable Books in Robotics
This talk was presented at the University of Manchester Open Research Conference, 9-10 June 2025.
The theory and practice gap is an important point to address in modern teaching and research. Students and researchers alike are expected to implement traditional and new methods quickly while being knowledgeable in theoretical aspects. In this work, to showcase the results of the Open Research Fellowship 24-25 in the field of Robotics, I show one way to help bridge the theory-practice gap creating a fully open CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 licensed executable textbook in Python, based on Jupyter notebooks. The textbook features, initially, five basic lessons that are currently used in the Robotics Manipulator PGT unit. Further, it contains eight additional lessons for advanced robot control. I cover the content of the lessons, pedagogic style, and best practices in integrating the latest technology involving Jupyter books 2 with MyST markdown, GitHub Actions, and GitHub pages to delivery an easy-to-maintain textbook compilation pipeline. To conclude, I talk about the avenues to expand this development within the group, department, University, and beyond.
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