Laboratory tools for robotics and automation education

This paper describes our efforts and plans to develop a Virtual Laboratory for the education in Robotics and Automation. These efforts are characterized by the need of blending R&A subjects into a traditional Computer Science curriculum, thus forcing a specific selection of development topics. In this context, the Robotics Laboratory must provide the basic as well as advanced experiments, to address the needs of students at different education levels. In this paper, we present the development of three main applications, to support Control Systems and Robotics classes, as well as the thesis and dissertation research. Of particular interest is the effort in the area of teleoperation, preliminary to the opening (next year) of a new curriculum on Medical Informatics, in which Computer Assisted Surgery will play an important role.