A Self-driving Car in the Classroom: Design of an Embedded, Behavior-Based Control System for a Car-Like Robot

Abstract

In this paper we study the design of a small mobile robot that resembles a self-driving car. The robot has been designed on the basis of a cheap, radio controlled toy car, but equipped with an embedded controller, a vision system and range sensors. To keep the robot affordable, low-cost, off-the-shelf components are used in the design. The developed robot is used to demonstrate the behavioral paradigm of the control system design, which is commonly used in mobile robots. The small autonomous car becomes an attractive educational tool, that may give the students an insight in both the hardware and software aspects of mobile robotics.