Mobile Mini-Robots for Engineering Education*

Abstract

Mobile robots provide a motivating and interesting tool to perform laboratory experiments within the context of mechatronics, microelectronics and control. Students study this particular example in system design and integration tasks at different levels of complexity. This paper describes a set of workshops in which mobile robots were constructed in order to introduce students by hands-on experiments to mechatronic systems and control system design. This was tackled in combination with a teleoperations environment for rovers. Such tele-education experiments in the area of telematics are addressed in the paper, as well as describing typical objectives, the mobile robot hardware and the exercises performed within such robotics workshops.