Teaching Practical Robotics During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Case Study on Regular and Hardware-in-the-Loop Simulations

Laboratory experiments are important pedagogical tools in engineering courses. Restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic made it very difficult or impossible for laboratory classes to take place, resulting on a fast transition to simulation as an approach to guarantee the effectiveness of teaching. Simulation environments are powerful tools that can be adopted for remote classes and self-study. With these tools, students can perform experiments and, in some cases, make use of the laboratory facilities from outside of the University. This paper proposes and describes two free tools developed during the COVID-19 pandemic lock-down that allowed students to work from home, namely a set of simulation experiments and a Hardware-in-the-loop simulator, accessible 24/7. Two approaches in Python and C languages are presented, both in the context of Robotics courses for Engineering students. Successful results and student feedback indicate the effectiveness of the proposed approaches in institutions in Portugal and in the Netherlands.