The course introduces the fundamental principles, problems, and techniques involved in the operation of mobile robots and other automated systems. Course topics include: components of automated systems, sensors and sensor management, signal acquisition and noise reduction, principles of robot localization, FSM-based A.I. for planning, fault-tolerance and building fault-tolerant systems, real-time operation and real-time operating systems; and computational considerations such as hardware limitations and code optimization. Ethical considerations in the implementation and deployment of automated systems are discussed. The concepts covered in the course are put in practice via projects developed on a Lego robotic platform.