Development of Bluetooth Communications for LEGO-Based Mobile Robot Laboratories

Nowadays, a lot of educational and research objectives can be achieved through the use of configurable, small, low-cost mobile robot kits. Using these systems, students must deal with topics like teamwork, real-world issues, integrated systems building, multidiscipline information, etc. This paper will present a mobile robot laboratory. The laboratory is based on the LEGO Mindstorms programmed with LegOS. With this environment a wide variety of robot activities can be developed due to its flexibility, power, and simple use. For the communication between the computer and the LEGO controller, the standard solution is the use of an infrared tower. With this kind of communication, several problems can occur because long distances between the emitter and the receiver are not allowed. In addition, the communication can fail if there is some obstacle between them. In order to avoid these limitations, the paper proposes a new communication system based on a Bluetooth chip.