Embedded Robotics

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . t all started with a new robot lab course I had developed to accompany my robotics lectures. We already had three large, heavy, and expensive mobile robots for research projects, but nothing simple and safe, which we I could give to students to practice on for an introductory course. We selected a mobile robot kit based on an 8-bit controller, and used it for the first couple of years of this course. This gave students not only the enj- ment of working with real robots but, more importantly, hands-on experience with control systems, real-time systems, concurrency, fault tolerance, sensor and motor technology, etc. It was a very successful lab and was greatly enjoyed by the students. Typical tasks were, for example, driving straight, finding a light source, or following a leading vehicle. Since the robots were rather inexpensive, it was possible to furnish a whole lab with them and to c- duct multi-robot experiments as well. Simplicity, however, had its drawbacks. The robot mechanics were unre- able, the sensors were quite poor, and extendability and processing power were very limited. What we wanted to use was a similar robot at an advanced level.