Designing and developing simple low cost mobile robots for autonomous navigation

The aim of this article is to illustrate how it is possible to design and build low cost mobile robots by using only simple commercial electronic devices and toys. As suggested by Valentino Braitenberg [1] in his experiments on synthetic psychology we developed two simple and compact mobile robots, each capable of doing two different autonomous behaviors: the wall following (moving the robot at a constant distance from the wall on its left or right hand) and the obstacle avoidance (avoiding collision with obstacles during the path). Two different control systems have been developed and compared. The first system is controlled by an analogical circuit obtained by using electronic components (transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors ..) whereas, the second is controlled by a digital circuit which employs a micro-processor board. Those platforms allow the robot configuration to be easily adapted to the specific requirement of each application. Their strengths and limitations are also detailed. Both the approaches are useful to reach the main purpose of our work which is the development of platforms to help students to learn electronics, computer programming and robot control [5]. Following this approach learning becomes a practical and, most of all, playful activity. Copyright © 2006, TSI® Press Printed in the USA. All rights reserved.