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INTRODUCTION
Service robotics is an emerging field that presents a
great growth potential and a variety of application
fields. The International Federation of Robotics
classifies these robots in three main groups (IFR,
2007): 1) human assistance applications (personal,
protection, entertainment,...); 2) equipment service
applications (maintenance, repairs, cleaning, …);
and 3) other autonomous applications (surveil-
lance, data acquisition, transport,...). Being the
assistance to people the main focus of this chapter,
the application detailed next can be included in
the first group.
Chapter 6
ABSTRACT
The interest in using mobile robots in education has increased over the last two decades, as it is a mul-
tidisciplinary exercise in which the student needs to apply different subjects related to robotics, control
engineering, software engineering, and electronics. In this chapter, the design and development of a
mobile robot focused on the assistance to people with restricted mobility is detailed. This application
of the service robot in the assistance feld has to be developed by the students of the last course of the
Automatic Control and Electronic Engineering Career at the Engineering Faculty of Bilbao, resulting
in a fully functional prototype. The aim of this design is to integrate the knowledge acquired through
different subjects in order to design and develop a functional, low-cost assistance robot in the service
robotics feld.
Multidisciplinary
Project-Based Learning
of Robotics
Itziar Cabanes
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Asier Zubizarreta
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Charles Pinto
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Fernando Artaza
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Marga Marcos
University of the Basque Country, Spain
Oscar Altuzarra
University of the Basque Country, Spain
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-0291-5.ch006