Version 1 and 2: Instruction is offered online through video lectures, study guides, required and supplemental readings, quizzes, homework, and final exams. Major topics include: key elements of autonomous robots along with examples from the field of robotics, both types of autonomous navigation, different parts that make up a robot, trade-offs when designing robots for different applications, coupling of actuators with other parts of the robots to achieve different types of movements, the way degrees of freedom are determined, description of what constitutes a sensor, different types of sensors currently in use in robotics, integrating robotic components with the microcontroller, role of computer programming in the control of a robot, different types of autonomous control, history and current state-of-the-art of model-based autonomous control in robotics, different ways of navigation based on model-based control, animal-inspired robot behavior, history of the development of behavior-based control, advantages of behavior-based control architecture with respect to model-based navigation, process of making a robot including list of parts, description of the electrical components that make up a robot, description of the challenges and different approaches of designing and building a new robot, recent robotics projects to illustrate design process, breaking up a job into subtasks in order to design or choose a better robot, robotic specialization for a specific task, industrial robots and their applications in factories around the world, history and trade-offs of industrial robots, service robotics as applied mainly to the home, trade-offs in the design of service robots and examples of current options available for use, hospital robots and neuro-prosthetics, trade-offs in their design for use in the different areas related to healthcare, the development of exoskeletons and neuro-prosthetics, development of self-driving vehicles. sensors used in current driverless cars, rise of probabilistic robotics and machine learning, flying robots: from autopilots to drones, components needed for drones and other flying robots, proper selection of sensors, actuators, and power supply, and design of bodies of underwater robots, two main types of underwater robots and their applications, conditions in space and their impact in the design and operation of robotic systems, recent space exploration missions using robots, rise of robotic systems for military applications, inspiration in swarm robotics from nature, development of robots with collection and processing of energy autonomously, controlling algorithms and robotic systems with reproductive and growth capabilities, social robotics with social capabilities and their limitations, development of robots with human-like capabilities, challenges ahead in the field of robotics, including legal aspects of autonomous systems and predictions of future developments.