Cost Effective Mobile Robots Navigation and Mapping System for Education

The study of mobile robot(s) based applications recently gained much popularity in academic settings. Different types of locomotion techniques exist for mobile robots, among them, wheeled robots are popular for educational purposes. Mobile robot applications may consist of single or multiple robot units. Some of the key issues to be addressed in mobile robot navigation are related to the condition of the underlying terrains, obstacles, localizations, mapping, and communication, among others. In many robotics related academic course works, students are often required to apply mobile robot localization and mapping capabilities in order to meet robot task objectives. This paper addresses an obstacle free scenario with a planar platform and presents cost-effective techniques for mobile robot localization and mapping. The paper includes a review of general fixed wheeled robot dynamics, addresses simple navigation techniques based on a given reference location for standard wheeled robots, and discusses strategies for building mapping configurations. In addition, constraints and troubleshoot approaches across different types of sensors used for mapping are presented.