Innovating in robotics education with Gazebo simulator and Jderobot framework

摘要

Robotics is becoming an interesting subject because of its technological appeal to students and because it is a good way to practice many concepts of engineering, mathematics, programming, physics, etcu u In this paper wc present the design and content of one course in the field of robotics Which use innovative tools for practice: Gazebo Simulator and JdeRobot software framework. Gazebo is an open source 3D Simulator very extended for research purposes, the reference in ROS standard platform, and recently chosen by DARPA for international DARPA Robotics Challenge (DRC) Using a realistic simulation, it allows students to learn with robots and expensive devices (humanoids, lasers, etc.), using standardized research tools. JdeRobot is an open source and component oriented middleware for creating robotics, computer vision and home automation applications In the designed education course the access to sensors and actuators has been simplificd allowing the student to focus on programming the system intelligence. The communications middleware and GUI management are hiddenu Students programs, without any change, can be tested both on simulated and on available real robots. This robotics course has been experimentally validated in lhc last lhrcc years with master and dcgrcc students in engineering and communications, getting good feedback from them.