Using the Android Platform to Control Robots
Using the Android Platform to control Robots
Stephan G¨ bel, Ruben Jubeh, Simon-Lennert Raesch and Albert Z¨ ndorf o u
Software Engineering Research Group
Kassel University
Wilhelmsh¨ her Allee 73 o 34121 Kassel, Germany
Email: [sgoe jubeh lrae zuendorf]@cs.uni-kassel.de
Abstract—The Android Mobile Phone Platform by Google becomes more and more popular among software developers, because of its powerful capabilities and open architecture. As its based on the java programming language, its ideal lecture content of specialized computer science courses or applicable to student projects. We think it is a great platform for a robotic system control, as it provides plenty of resources and already integrates a lot of sensors. The java language makes the system very attractive to apply state-of-the-art software engineering techniques, which is our main research topic. The unsolved issue is to make the android device interoperate with the remaining parts of the robot: actuators, specialized sensors and maybe coprocessors. In this paper we discuss various connection methods and present a first approach to connect Android with the LEGO
Mindstorms NXT robotics system, which we successfully used in our robotics/software engineering courses so far.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Android devices are powerful mobile computers with permanent internet connectivity and a rich variety of built-in sensors. More properties make the Android system very applicable for university use: Android uses the Java programming language, which our students are familiar with. Getting started with the Android API is easy; the API is open, i.e. developers can access almost every low-level function and are not sandboxed. In addition, the Android API allows easy access to the hardware components. Interesting for robotics use are the numerous communication interfaces like WiFi, Bluetooth and GSM/UMTS, USB, and the integrated sensors, that is: accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and
Stephan G¨ bel, Ruben Jubeh, Simon-Lennert Raesch and Albert Z¨ ndorf o u
Software Engineering Research Group
Kassel University
Wilhelmsh¨ her Allee 73 o 34121 Kassel, Germany
Email: [sgoe jubeh lrae zuendorf]@cs.uni-kassel.de
Abstract—The Android Mobile Phone Platform by Google becomes more and more popular among software developers, because of its powerful capabilities and open architecture. As its based on the java programming language, its ideal lecture content of specialized computer science courses or applicable to student projects. We think it is a great platform for a robotic system control, as it provides plenty of resources and already integrates a lot of sensors. The java language makes the system very attractive to apply state-of-the-art software engineering techniques, which is our main research topic. The unsolved issue is to make the android device interoperate with the remaining parts of the robot: actuators, specialized sensors and maybe coprocessors. In this paper we discuss various connection methods and present a first approach to connect Android with the LEGO
Mindstorms NXT robotics system, which we successfully used in our robotics/software engineering courses so far.
I. I NTRODUCTION
Android devices are powerful mobile computers with permanent internet connectivity and a rich variety of built-in sensors. More properties make the Android system very applicable for university use: Android uses the Java programming language, which our students are familiar with. Getting started with the Android API is easy; the API is open, i.e. developers can access almost every low-level function and are not sandboxed. In addition, the Android API allows easy access to the hardware components. Interesting for robotics use are the numerous communication interfaces like WiFi, Bluetooth and GSM/UMTS, USB, and the integrated sensors, that is: accelerometer, gyroscope, compass and