Teaching control in mobile robotics with V-REP and a Khepera IV library

Abstract

The advances of information and communication technologies have impacted in control education. Virtual laboratories are increasingly been used to enhance the way that students interact with simulations. High degree of visualization and interaction offered by modern computers open the opportunity to teach theory fundamentals with a more natural approach. This work describes the use of the robot simulator V-REP and the Khepera IV library to teach interesting control problems with mobile robots. The Khepera IV library supports the new functionalities of the most recent version of the wheeled robot Khepera, which allows creating advanced 3D simulations in the V-REP environment. The article also explains how instructors can use this development to teach classical control problems in mobile robotics. In particular, the theory and practice of the problems for position control, trajectory tracking, path following and the obstacle avoidance are given in detail.