A Modular, Low-Cost Platform

IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine 69 1070-9932/06/$20.00©2006 IEEE M obile robotics is still an open and challenging field with a big future, having many possible indoor as well as outdoor applications that can help to improve industrial production and some aspects of workers’ quality of life [1]. Very interesting applications are being developed that, in the medium term, can be part of our daily lives [2]. Nevertheless, most of these applications are still in the research stage; it is important that the knowledge generated by those research efforts is gradually incorporated to the topics that students, mainly engineers, learn in universities, bringing together the research and student communities. Therefore, robotics itself can be used not only for industrial improvement but also for education purposes. Nowadays, it is of the maximum relevance that computer, electric, control, or mechanical engineering university program studies include the teaching of both theoretical and practical courses on robotics. While traditional technical education strategies tend to promote individualism and competence among students, nowadays, engineering challenges in most areas, and especially robotics, require working with multidisciplinary teams in order to successfully integrate different areas of knowledge. Practical work on robotics at the university level can help engineering students develop the needed communication and working skills for teamwork. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, we briefly describe the course on robot design that electronics systems engineers take in their last semester at the Instituto Tecnológico de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey (ITESM), Monterrey, Mexico Campus. In this course, the use of project oriented learning (POL) [3] and collaborative learning [4] are proposed. Then, we describe the design and implementation of a modular, low-cost, three-wheeled autonomous robotic platform, to serve as a base platform from which different applications, educational and research, could be mounted.