QBOT: An educational mobile robot controlled in MATLAB Simulink environment

This paper describes Quanser's mobile robot control framework (QMRCF) for an educational robot called Qbot. The QMRCF accelerates the development of mobile robot control algorithms and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) testing using model-based design techniques of matlab simulink. This paper also validates the performance of QMRCF using several experiments in various research fields of mobile robotics, e.g., teleoperation, navigation, and obstacle avoidance.

1. INTRODUCTION

Researchers today are focusing on mobile robots because of their potential applications in hazardous environments [1], agriculture and harvesting [2], house-hold tasks [3], and medical applications [4]. The core technologies involved in these applications are sensory augmented remote control of mobile robots, capability of self-localized autonomous navigation, obstacles avoidance, and intelligent decision-making for task execution [5]. Successful implementation of these techniques largely depends on various sensors, e.g., shaft encoder for position estimation of the robot, range finder for obstacle avoidance, vision system for visual pattern recognition, and force feedback for haptic application.