A Remote Lab for Experiments with a Team of Mobile Robots

Abstract

In this paper, a remote lab for experimenting with a team of mobile robots is presented. Robots are built with the LEGO Mindstorms technology and user-defined control laws can be directly coded in the Matlab programming language and validated on the real system. The lab is versatile enough to be used for both teaching and research purposes. Students can easily go through a number of predefined mobile robotics experiences without having to worry about robot hardware or low-level programming languages. More advanced experiments can also be carried out by uploading custom controllers. The capability to have full control of the vehicles, together with the possibility to define arbitrarily complex environments through the definition of virtual obstacles, makes the proposed facility well suited to quickly test and compare different control laws in a real-world scenario. Moreover, the user can simulate the presence of different types of exteroceptive sensors on board of the robots or a specific communication architecture among the agents, so that decentralized control strategies and motion coordination algorithms can be easily implemented and tested. A number of possible applications and real experiments are presented in order to illustrate the main features of the proposed mobile robotics remote lab.

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“…Os alunos podem desenvolver algoritmos para controle do robô, simulá-lo no laboratório virtual e implantá-lo no laboratório remoto para fins de testes. [Casini et al 2014] apresentam um laboratório de acesso remoto (LAR) para experimentação com um time de robôs móveis. Os robôs são construídos com a tecnologia Lego Mindstorms, e os usuários exploram o ambiente Matlab para o desenvolvimento de estratégias de controle da equipe de robôs.…”

“…Neste sentido, várias pesquisas têm sido realizadas a fim de contribuir para o ensino de programação utilizando laboratórios remotos como apoio, a exemplo de [Guimarães et al 2003], [Souza et al 2011], [Kulich et al 2013], [Chaos et al 2013] e [Casini et al 2014]. Esses trabalhos utilizam a estrutura de um laboratório físico e o disponibilizam na internet para permitir que pessoas mesmo geograficamente distantes possam ter experiências com robôs.…”

Remotely controlled compressed air spring—Design and implementation for distance education

“…Today, there are many experiments related to electronics and microelectronics , power electronics and electrical drives, control and automation , SCADA systems . In addition, remote experiments are widely used in the fields of mechatronics and robotics . However, remote experiments are very successfully used in natural science like physics and chemistry.…”