Experimentations on advanced robotics for academic education

In this paper we recall the potentialities of LEGO Educational Toolkit, an intuitive and effective tool for robotics education already used in some secondary schools. In particular we analize its applicability to more advanced scientific subjects in university education. In our paper, we present, as practical examples, two prototypes of advanced robotics exper- imentations developed to validate and to extend the LEGO Educational Toolkit for academical education. The first experimentation consists in the construction and programming of a 3D manipulator (type PUMA) with 3 degree of freedom. The manipulator is controlled via IR link by a software running on a remote PC with Linux operating system. This experimentation is designed to practise notions of mechatronics, I/O communication and control theory. The second experimentation instead is dedicated to robot vision. The students can realize a pan-tilt controller for the LEGO Camera and use it for different applications of image processing. In the presented example, a skin detection algorithm is used to recognize human skin in the image and a visual servoing algotithm is used to control the pan-tilt unit in order to keep in the field of view of the LEGO Camera the subjects recognized as humans. With experimentations like the ones we described, students can have a direct confirmation of studied theories and can verify the correctness of learned concepts