Robotics education: proposals for laboratory practices about manipulators

Robotics education at M. Sc. courses is quite challenging, especially in the organization of intriguing laboratory activities about industrial manipulators, to accompany and complete traditional material and lessons on kinematics, dynamics, motion planning and control issues. Time and space constraints, the number of students attending the labs, and the available software and equipments (and their cost) can seriously limit the lab practices that can be actually offered in a Robotics course. On the basis of the experience matured at Politecnico di Torino, this paper describes how lab practices about manipulators can be organized by using low-cost structures, built up from the standard LEGO Mindstorms Kit, so to let the students become familiar with manipulators in different ways. Such practices are then well completed by activities with an industrial robot, available at Politecnico.