Control of mobile robots using mobile technologies

Nowadays, many educational and research objectives can be achieved through the use of configurable, small, low-cost mobile robot kits. Using these systems, students must learn to work in teams and deal with topics such as real-world issues, integrated systems building and multidisciplinary information. This paper deals with mobile robot control. It presents a low cost laboratory experiment based on LEGO Mindstorms. In order to avoid the limitations of the original communication system, a new one is proposed. This system is based on Bluetooth and establishes communication between a host computer and/or mobile robots. With this environment a wide variety of robot activities can be developed due to its flexibility, power, and simplicity of use. The paper also presents examples of these activities related with robot control design, artificial vision, trajectories planning, etc.