Low-cost commercial Lego™ platform for mobile robotics

This paper shows the potential of a Lego™-based low-cost commercial robotic platform for learning and testing prototypes in higher education and research. The overall set-up aims to explain mobile robotic issues, including mechatronics, robotics and automatic control theory. The capabilities and limitations of Lego robots are studied within two experiments: the fi rst shows how to eliminate a number of restrictions in Lego robots using some programming alternatives; the second addresses the complex problem of multi-position control. Algorithms and their additional tools have been fully designed, applied and documented, and the results are shown throughout the paper. The platform was found to be suitable for teaching and researching key issues related to the aforementioned fi elds.