AN EXPERIMENTAL MOBILE ROBOT PLATFORM FOR AUTONOMOUS SYSTEMS RESEARCH AND EDUCATION

摘要

A mobile robot platform for autonomous systems researchrnand education is described in this paper. The platform isrnbased on the Lego Mindstorms NXT controller and its usernin a realistic research application is assessed. The relativelyrnlow cost and high performance of this device provides anrneffective mobile computing platform that can be used to implementrnadvanced autonomous system applications directlyrnon the target hardware. In this work, a novel trajectoryrntracking and coordinated control application is developedrnin the MATLAB/Simulink programming environment andrndownloaded onto the NXT target using rapid prototypingrntools. This application reveals the capabilities and some ofrnthe limitations of the NXT as a mobile robot platform forrnautonomous systems research. An extension of this platformrnto overcome these limitations, based on interfacingrnthe more computationally powerful Nokia N800 internetrntablet to the NXT for additional computing and communicationrncapability, is then discussed.