The first seeds of the course were planted when Steven Lomas, a final-year student intending to go on to postgraduate studies, was looking for interesting courses for his M.Sc.. While so doing, he came across an entry in the university Calendar proclaiming the existence of a course numbered 07.473, offered by the Computer Science department, and called "Robotics and real-time control". The Calendar entry was a sort of accident; it is said that, when the department's first Calendar entry was under construction, it was deemed to be a good idea to think of all possible course titles that might be required, and to prescribe them, forever if necessary, as "not presented this year". 07.473 was one such course, and had never been given.
But that's what Steven wanted to do, so he enquired of various academics who would be giving the course if it existed, and ended up with me. I was cautiously interested, recalling my PFL experience, but also recalling that the PFL experience was all I had, and knowing that the subject was a lot bigger than that. I eventually agreed to supervise Steven in a reading course under the 07.473 banner, and suggested that his aim should be, in effect, to write the lecture notes I would need to present a real lecture course at some later date. Steven agreed to this proposal, and all seemed to be well.
Except that Steven then told his friends. Some of them thought it was quite a good idea too, and told their friends. A stream of friends came to visit me. Having accepted Steven, I couldn't very well deny all interest and turn them summarily away, so I temporised. When the time for temporising finally ran out, I had to make a decision, and by that time there were around ten potential takers for 07.473. That was too many for individual reading courses, so I decided to take the plunge and spent a frantic summer vacation putting together the first 07.473 lecture course.
The first course ran with that set of lecture notes, and practical work using anything that came to hand - most notably an ancient turtle mobile robot which had been lying around the department for a long time, a train set "borrowed" from my son, and access to some equipment in the Mechanical Engineering department. ( We owe a lot to the ME department, and to George Blanchard in particular, for their support during the early years. The arrangement continued for some time, until it unfortunately fell into disuse because of lack of interest from the students. )
And it worked, not too badly. Since then, the course has developed and changed significantly, as I've found out more about the subject, but it still shows traces of its history to those who know.