A LEGO-based mobile robotic platform for evaluation of parallel control and estimation algorithms

An inexpensive robotic system intended for educational use in parallel algorithms for embedded control and signal processing is described. The hardware platform is comprised of a state-of-the-art multi-core system in a wireless network with several mobile LEGO robots that collect data from their environment. The setup covers a broad range of real-time cooperative and parallel problems arising in sensor networks, robotics, surveillance and high-performance embedded applications. As an illustration, a bearings-only tracking problem, estimating both mobile robots positions and the position of a non-cooperating target by using parallel particle filtering, is solved on the proposed platform. In order to improve the estimation accuracy and to adjust to changes in the environment and movements of the target, a controller positioning the mobile robots is utilized.