Interactive Learning of Mobile Robots Kinematics Using ARCore

Recent years have witnessed several educational innovations to provide effective and engaging classroom instruction with the integration of immersive interactions based on augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR). This paper outlines the development of an ARCore-based application (app) that can impart interactive experiences for hands-on learning in engineering laboratories. The ARCore technology enables a smartphone to sense its environment and detect horizontal and vertical surfaces, thus allowing the smartphone to estimate any position in its workspace. In this mobile app, with touch-based interaction and AR feedback, the user can interact with a wheeled mobile robot and reinforce the concepts of kinematics for a differential drive mobile robot. The user experience is evaluated and system performance is validated through a user study with participants. The assessment shows that the proposed AR interface for interacting with the experimental setup is intuitive, easy to use, exciting, and recommendable.