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Teaching Mobile Robotics Using the Autonomous Driving Simulator of the Portuguese Robotics Open

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 1092))

Abstract

Teaching mobile robotics adequately is a complex task. Within the strategies found in the literature, the one used in this work includes the use of a simulator. This simulator represents the Autonomous Driving Competition of the Portuguese Robotics Open. Currently, the simulator supports two different robots and all challenges of the autonomous driving competition. This simulator was used at a Robotics course of the Integrated Master Degree in Informatics and Computing Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. In order to study the influence of the simulator in the college students learning process, a survey was conducted. The results and its corresponding analysis indicate that the simulator is suited to teach some of the mobile robotics challenges crossing several fields of study, including image processing, computer vision and control.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The challenges are defined in the competition ruling at: https://web.fe.up.pt/~robotica2019/images/fnr2019_Autonomous_Driving.pdf.

  2. 2.

    Source code available at: https://github.com/ee09115/conde_simulator.

  3. 3.

    https://sigarra.up.pt/feup/en/UCURR_GERAL.FICHA_UC_VIEW?pv_ocorrencia_id=420040.

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Acknowledgements

Authors gratefully acknowledge the funding of Project NORTE -01-0145-FEDER-000022 - SciTech - Science and Technology for Competitive and Sustainable Industries, co-financed by Programa Operacional Regional do Norte (NORTE2020), through Fundo Europeu de Desenvolvimento Regional (FEDER).

This work is partially financed by the ERDF European Regional Development Fund through the Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalisation - COMPETE 2020 Programme within project POCI-01-0145-FEDER-006961, and by National Funds through the FCT Fundao para a Cincia e a Tecnologia (Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology) as part of project UID/EEA/50014/2013.

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Correspondence to Valter Costa .

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Costa, V., Cebola, P., Tavares, P., Morais, V., Sousa, A. (2020). Teaching Mobile Robotics Using the Autonomous Driving Simulator of the Portuguese Robotics Open. In: Silva, M., Luís Lima, J., Reis, L., Sanfeliu, A., Tardioli, D. (eds) Robot 2019: Fourth Iberian Robotics Conference. ROBOT 2019. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 1092. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-35990-4_37

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