<title>Multimedia modeling of autonomous mobile robots</title>

Abstract

Modeling of autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) is sought to enable the designers to investigate various aspects of the design before the actual implementation takes place. Simulation techniques are undoubtedly enriching the design tools, by which the designer would be able to vary the design parameters as appropriate until achieving some optimal performance point. Although they are general purpose, multimedia tools, especially authoring tools, can give the AMR designer some degree of assistance in fulfilling his simulation task as fast as possible. This rapid prototyping tool is rather cost effective, and allow the designer to interactively manipulate his design in simple steps. In this paper, a multimedia environment has been constructed to enable designers to simulate AMRs in order to investigate aspects concerning their kinematics and dynamics. It is also sought that these design experiences can be gathered and categorized in a tutoring system that could be used by practitioners and students enrolled in highly technical courses such as robotics. The rich multimedia environment can assist the learner in so many ways by devising examples, suggesting solutions and design tradeoffs that have been experienced before.