Vision-guided mobile robots for design competitions

We present the Teaching system integration in engineering curricula at universities via popular and effective robot-design competitions. In this article, we first present the robot kit we use and discuss the experiences we gained in, and shortcomings of, our robot competitions. We then present the low-cost color vision system, developed especially for our course. We also discuss our experiences in the 1998 competition, where we first made use of the system, and the 2001 competition. Finally, we present the results of a questionnaire given to students who have completed the course.