A ROS-based Open Web Platform for Intelligent Robotics Education

This paper presents the new release of the Robotics Academy learning framework and the open course on Intelligent Robotics available on it. The framework hosts a collection of practical exercises of robot programming for engineering students and teachers at universities. It has evolved from an open tool, which the users had to install on their machines, to an open web platform, simplifying the user's experience. It has been redesigned with the adoption of state-of-the-art web technologies and DevOps that make it cross-platform and scalable. The web browser is the new frontend for the users, both for source code editing and for the monitoring GUI of the exercise execution. All the software dependences are already preinstalled in a container, including the Gazebo simulator. The proposed web platform provides a free and nice way for teaching Robotics following the learn-by-doing approach. It is also a useful complement for remote educational robotics.