Development Of An Alphabot2 Simulator For Rpi Camera And Infrared Sensors

In recent years robots have been used as a tool for teaching purposes, motivating the development of fully virtual environments for combined real/simulated robotics teaching. The AlphaBot2 Raspberry Pi (RPi), a robot used for education, has no currently available simulator. A Gazebo simulator was produced and a ROS framework was implemented for hardware abstraction and control of low-level modules facilitating students control of the robot's physical behaviours in the real and simulated robot, simultaneously. For the demonstration of the basic model operation, an algorithm for detection of obstacles and lines was implemented for the IR sensors, however, some discrepancies in a line track timed test were detected justifying the need for further work in modelling and performance assessment. Despite that, the implemented ROS structure was verified to be functional in the simulation and the real AlphaBot2 for its motion control, through the input sensors and camera.