The development of Internet-based laboratory environments for teaching robotics and artificial intelligence

This paper reports on the development of an online environment supporting a network-based robotics educational project. The project was undertaken by a large body of students and involved adding a level of intelligence to control a toy device that was accessible remotely over the network. The students were to design and implement a stop-look-act control strategy for a simple pick-up task. The paper describes the educational context of the project, the task the students were required to undertake, the hardware and software environment used to support the project, and the performance of the environment over the duration of the assignment. The results contribute to the understanding of the infrastructure support required for Internet-based robotics projects and online robot demonstrations.