A Portable Mobile Robot Simulator For A World Wide Web Robotics Practicum

Abstract

In recent years, courses in the design and programming of mobile autonomous robotics have been introduced at a number of institutions. These activities provide experience in a number of practical areas, including computer programming, project management, and technical writing. Further, they provide those experiences in an entertaining manner that may motivate students to pursue additional education in computer science and engineering. By their nature, however, these classes are resource intensive, often limited access to a few, fortunate students. In an experimental attempt to increase access to these opportunities, we have offered an introductory level course in autonomous robotics over the World Wide Web. In our class, students developed robot controllers to solve a series of increasingly difficult problems on a mobile robot simulator that we designed and implemented using Java. When finished, they upload their controllers to a real robot in our lab and observe the results via a WWW web cam. In this document, we will focus on our class' infrastructure with particular emphasis on the design and operation of a platform independent graphical simulation of the Khepera mobile robot. We will discuss how this freely available software provides accurate simulation, ease of use, and compatibility with the real robot in our lab. The paper will conclude with a discussion of the future plans and a set of open questions we intend to address in future offerings of the course.