In this webinar we present a hardware-in-the-loop robot control interface built on top of the MATLAB programming environment. Specifically, we leverage MATLAB integration with external languages to develop toolboxes to interface with off-the-shelf robotics simulators, sensors, and platforms. These tools are used to introduce programming and robotics concepts to mechanical engineering undergraduate students. In this presentation, we give an overview of our MATLAB based robot control interface and show how these tools are integrated into the classroom and used in our research.

About the Presenter: Dr. M. Ani Hsieh, assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department, serves as the principal investigator of the Scalable Autonomous Systems (SAS) Lab, with Ph.D. candidates T. William Mather, James Worcester, and Kenneth Mallory. The SAS Lab is an interdisciplinary lab focusing on fundamental research in multi-agent robotic systems with a focus in decentralized control and coordination. The facility is housed in Drexel University's Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics Department and the lab’s members consist of undergraduate and graduate students from the Mechanical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computer Science departments.