MAJIC: A Java Application for Controlling Multiple, Heterogeneous Robotic Agents

When teaching robotics, we have a number of constraints and desires to satisfy. We are limited by the time available to teach a class, so we need a robotic system that our students can get up to speed on quickly and easily. We are limited by robot availability, in the robots that are on hand, but also because manufacturers of inexpensive teaching robots tend to go bankrupt or change focus quickly, making it difficult to purchase new robots with the same interface as previous models. Thus, we desire an interface easily adaptable to new robots. Finally, we have recently become interested in teaching techniques for dealing with teams of possibly heterogeneous robots. All existing systems that we examined fall short in one or more of these areas, prompting our development of the The multi-agent Java interface controller (MAJIC). MAJIC was designed from the bottom up with modern software engineering principles. The interface is easy to use and learn, can be quickly adapted to new robots, and allows control of multiple robots simultaneously. This paper presents the design of this system, highlighting rapid development and clarity compared with other systems.