Low-cost commercial LEGO platform for mobile robotics

This paper shows the potential of a Lego\c{opyright} based low-cost commercial robotic platform for learning and testing prototypes in higher education and research. The overall setup aims to explain mobile robotic issues strongly related to several fields such as Mechatronics, Robotics, and Automatic Control theory. The capabilities and limitations of LEGO robots are studied within two projects. The first one involves a robotic vehicle which is able to follow several predefined paths. The second project concerns to the classical problem of position control. Algorithms and additional tools have been fully designed, applied and documented with results shown throughout the paper. The platform is found to be suitable for teaching and researching on key issues related to the aforementioned fields.