Distance Learning in Robotics and Automation by Remote Control of Lego Mobile Robots Fabio Carusi, Marco Casini, Domenico Prattichizzo, Antonio Vicino Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione Universit` a di Siena via Roma 56, 53100 Siena, Italy Email: {carusi,casini,prattichizzo,vicino}@ing.unisi.it Abstract—This paper presents the Automatic Control Telelab (ACT), a remote laboratory for education in robotics and automation developed in Siena. A special attention will be devoted to the new ACT process, a Lego mobile robot, which has been recently added to the telelab. Remote users can control the Lego mobile robot, and all the other processes, using an Internet browser. Moreover users can design new controllers by means of the Matlab/Simulink environment. The ACT home page is http://www.dii.unisi.it/∼control/act. I. I NTRODUCTION Internet and Web technologies are changing dramatically the education in robotics and automation. Many distance learning paradigms have been developed in recent years and among these, laboratories accessible through the Internet are certainly the most effective ones. Consider for instance the tele-laboratory developed in [1] or the project described in [2] where an expensive resource, such as a mobile robot, is shared on the web. Regarding the web technologies used in robotics and automation courses, exhaustive contributions have been provided in [3], [4] where the authors describe the use of virtual [5] and remote labs in control teaching. A distinguished feature of remote labs with respect to virtual labs is that users can interact with real physical processes through the Internet. The implementation of a remote lab requires in general more efforts. Moreover, the complexity of the hardware and software architecture design increases when the remote lab allows the user to design the controller within the remote web session. This is for instance the case of the remote lab developed at the Oregon State University [6], where students can remotely control a robot arm not only changing some parameters but, more interestingly, transmitting the control program which changes the dynamics of the closed-loop system. A remote laboratory can either use a well–known software environment, such as LabVIEW [7] and Matlab/Simulink [8], [9], [10], or use some special purpose software, as in [1], [11]. It is the authors’ opinion that well–known software environ- ments are better suited to spread out the remote laboratory practice. Usually, students do not want to learn ad–hoc control languages which are tailored for the particular remote lab and they like to take advantage of control functions developed in other well–known contexts. On the other side, integrating a well–known software interface, like Matlab/Simulink, in the remote lab architecture is a difficult task and makes the overall remote lab design more complex. The Automatic Control Telelab (ACT) has been developed in Siena since 1999 [12], [13]. It is a remote laboratory for robotics and automation education. The ACT allows the user to choose a predefined controller to steer the process, or, more interestingly, to remotely synthesize a new controller through the Matlab/Simulink environment and its toolboxes. In this paper the ACT and a new ACT process, a Lego mobile robot developed during the Robotics class held at University of Siena in 2003, are presented. Students can design their own controller to track a user-defined trajectory other than running predefined controllers. Four webcams increase the telepresence during the remote experiment. The new Lego Mindstorms Robotics Invention System [14] is a good exam- ple of low-cost platforms for teaching integrated systems in robotics education [15]. A nice piece of work involving Lego Mindstorms and robotic applications is that discussed in [16] where authors present a very interesting education project on surgical robotics for college students. One of the main features of the ACT project consists in simplifying the user interface in a way that only the very basic notions of Simulink should be known in order to design the controller of the Lego mobile robot, as far as the other experiments. During the experiment it is also possible to change some typical controller parameters and the reference signal. II. THE AUTOMATIC CONTROL TELELAB The Automatic Control Telelab is a remote laboratory mainly intended for educational purpose, and since 1999 it has been used in control systems classes [12], [13]. The aim of the project is to allow students to easily put in practice their theoretical knowledge of robotics and automation without restrictions due to laboratory opening time and processes availability. The ACT is accessible 24 hours a day from any computer connected to the Internet by means of any common browser. No special software or plug-in is required. Users can design new controllers by means of the Matlab/Simulink environment. However, if Matlab is not avail- able on the local computer, the user can still run experiments by choosing among the available predefined controllers. A live video window is provided for each remote experiment session. Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation New Orleans, LA • April 2004 0-7803-8232-3/04/$17.00 ©2004 IEEE 1820