Lego Vehicles: A Technology for Studying Intelligent Systems

During the summer of 1989 we established the Intelligent Sensing and Control Laboratory in the Department of Artificial Intelligence at Edinburgh. This laboratory is designed to support both post-graduate teaching and basic research into intelligent sensing and control. In this paper we present the motives for setting up the Intelligent Sensing and Control Laboratory and the design and implementation of a Lego Technic™ based technology used to build simple autonomous vehicles intended to support the teaching and research activities of the laboratory. We report on some of the experiences gained from its first year of operation and relate these to the requirements of our biologically oriented research programme into intelligent behaviour and its development in autonomous artificial mobile systems.