Open hardware wheeled mobile robot for educational purposes

Mobile robots are valuable educational tools due to they raise enthusiasm in students and also given the diversity of technological disciplines that they involve, including electronics, mechanics, sensing systems, embedded systems, signal and image processing, wireless communication, programming and computational algorithms, and artificial intelligence, among others. The present work describes a prototype of an open hardware wheeled mobile robot for educational purposes -the EduRoMAA. This robot is designed to be used as an experimental platform in embedded system programming courses, covering from the initial to advanced level, using different processing boards such as: Arduino and EduCIAA. A detailed description of the mechanical and electronic parts, as well as a PC application for testing the robot is presented. Tested processing boards are described, including their pros and cons.