An Affordable Set of Control System Laboratories Using A Low-Cost Robotic Platform

The development of an inexpensive robotic platform is presented. Our aim is to provide a complete low-cost hardware tool to illustrate control system methods. The capabilities of this platform allow both, researchers and students, to implement from basic techniques to complex ones (e.g., from model-based control techniques to multiagent dynamical systems). The hardware that has been designed and developed performs experiments for single or multiple robot control employing capabilities, such as locomotion, communication, perception, and autonomous decision making. We illustrate different control and system dynamics techniques using this platform. After presenting the model and navigation strategies, single-agent techniques that ensure safe and predictable navigation are shown (PID and fuzzy logic controllers). Then, two multiagent techniques are described in order to prove the versatility of the platform. The first strategy illustrates common problems that arise in nature and power systems (phase synchronization models based on pulse-coupled biological oscillators and the Kuramoto oscillator). Second, a game theoretical approach for multirobot consensus is shown. In all these cases, experimental results show the performance of the platform.