Lego Mindstorms NXT for Students’ Research Projects in Control Field ⋆ Alexey A. Bobtsov *,** Anton A. Pyrkin * Sergey A. Kolyubin * Alexander A. Kapitonov * Alexey D. Feskov * Sergey M. Vlasov * Alexander Y. Krasnov * Aleksey V. Khovanskiy * Sergey V. Shavetov * * Department of Control Systems and Informatics, Saint Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies Mechanics and Optics, Saint Petersburg, Russia ** Laboratory “Control of Complex Systems”, Institute for Problems of Mechanical Engineering, Bolshoy pr. V.O. 61, St.Petersburg, 199178, Russia E-mail: bobtsov@mail.ru, kap2fox@gmail.com, s.kolyubin@gmail.com Abstract Nowadays scientific community faces challenging problem on how to make science popular among young people and attract students’ attention to applied and fundamental research. In this article we share our personal experience of organization of the student research and development laboratory in the field of automatic control for robotics. Paper describes how Lego Mindstorms NXT technology can be used to engage students in the research process. Examples of students’ research projects embodying results obtained by elder colleagues at the Control Systems and Informatics Department of St. Petersburg National Research University ITMO are described here. Keywords: Teaching curricula development, control education, management of competences and knowledge, Lego Mindstorm NXT, mobile robots, adaptive control. 1. INTRODUCTION “Boring lessons are suitable only to incite hatred against teacher, and the entire teaching” Jean Jacques Rousseau This article is an extension of the results presented at 18th IFAC World Congress (IFAC (2011)). That uncom- mon presentation met wide response not only during the Congress, but also after on the Internet. It is clear that we are not alone facing problems involving young people in science. It is hard to motivate students employing abundant, but single theory. Often they lose interest in the middle of the way. Students want something simple and clear, what they can touch with their own hands and even brake during experiments. Work as a team is also very attractive aspect. At the same time they want to feel real technology, not just a toy, but if you are not a professor, expensive high-end scientific equipment is inaccessible. Of course, we can stuck on the computer simulation, assembly diagrams and graphing, but it does not give clear concept of the applicability of these results in real life. ⋆ The article is supported by the Federal Target Program “Scientific and Technical Personnel of Innovative Russia” for 2009-2013 (project 16.740.11.0553). Today’s research equipment industry offers a plenty of original solutions. We decided to stay on the Lego Mind- storms NXT due to several reasons. To quickly get it work designer has a sufficient number of program environments ranging from C and Java and ending with Assembler. Moreover, it easily connects to Matlab provides automatic translation of obtained models to specific code. Finally, Lego can be considered as a tradeoff in sense of function- ality and price compare to competitive decisions such as Pololu, Parallax or Robotis Bioloid robot kits. From our point of view, there is no reason to discuss theoretical aspects within the framework of this article as they are based on information from the books and articles that have already become classical (Astrom et al. (2001); Bobtsov (2005); Fradkov et al. (1999); Krstic et al. (1995); Monopoli (1974); Narendra et al. (1978); Nikiforov (1999)). Main attention in our article will be given to the laboratory studies based on Lego Mindstorms NXT technologies. 2. PROJECT I Consider the classical track control problem. Lego NXT mobile robot with full-track drive is used as plant. Any object, for example, a book, can be a tracking object (Fig. 1). Ultrasonic sensor measures the distance to the book. Control algorithm compares the current distance with the given distance and forms a control signal to the servodrive in accordance with the tracking error e(t). Proceedings of the 9th IFAC Symposium Advances in Control Education The International Federation of Automatic Control Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, June 19-21, 2012 978-3-902823-01-4/12/$20.00 © 2012 IFAC 102 10.3182/20120619-3-RU-2024.00051