Application and evaluation of Lego NXT tool for Mobile Robot Control

Abstract Mobile robot control education is a motivating subject due to the practical work that it involves. For this reason it is very important the platform chosen for the laboratory activities with the students. This work will present different activities based on Lego NXT developed for teaching Control Engineering. The Lego tools have been used for the last 5 years for the practical works of “Mecatronica”, a course of the last year of Computer Science Faculty of the Universidad Politecnica de Valencia (Spain). The tasks that the students must do during this course deal with system identification, dynamic control of the robot's wheels, kinematic control of the mobile robot, path generation etc. At the end of the Mecatronica course, the students must fill an opinion poll about the work of the course, the tools used, etc. The paper will also describe the student's opinions, and they will verify that the Lego NXT is a very interesting and motivating tool. In addition, it is a very good platform for promoting the team work due to its multidisciplinary nature