A System on Chip approach to enhanced learning in interdisciplinary robotics

To sustain advanced interdisciplinary teaching and learning in the rapidly growing and diversifying field of robotics, we have successfully employed FPGA based System on Chip (SoC) technology to provide abstraction between high level software and low level I/O- and control hardware. Our approach is to provides students with a simple FPGA based framework for hardware access, and hardware I/O development, which is independent of computer platform and programming language, and enable the students to add to, or change I/O hardware in accordance with their skills. We have tested the framework in an embedded systems course and various student projects, and have found that it greatly enhance the students abilities to control hardware from software, and dramatically reduce the time spent on software ↔ hardware interfacing. As the framework is also scalable, it can support projects from controlling a single LED, to complex modular and aggregated robots with demands for high bandwidths and low jitter in the control loop.