Using LEGO robots with LabVIEW for a Summer School on Mechatronics

This paper reports on the experience of the 2008 international summer school on mechatronics, jointly organized by the University of M´alaga (Spain) and the Technical University of Dresden (Germany). An important part of the hands-on practice and two student competitions have been based on the LEGO Mindstorms NXT Set. To stimulate lab work with representative general purpose software tools, LabVIEW and the NXT add-ons have been used. The paper proposes basic LabVIEW structures for several LEGO case study practices. A description of the course as well as an assessment on student competences are also included.