A Low-Cost Autonomous Robot and Educational Platform for Intelligent Automation Experiments

Abstract

In this paper, we present a low-cost (less than $10) real-time mobile-robot platform: Aicar, for educational experiments in Intelligent Automation and related disciplines such as Artificial Intelligence and Robot Engineering. The Aicar platform uses Arduino open-source hardware and supports various programming interfaces including C/C++, Python and Matlab. With its attached android mobile phone, Aicar can support image capturing and video streaming for computer vision applications. With Aicar, various Intelligent Automation and Artificial Intelligence algorithms can be practiced, including rule based system, reinforcement learning and deep learning algorithms. Aicar platform is open sourced and the hardware design and software startup code for Aicar project is available for public access through the free online service.