Lego-bike: A challenging robotic lab project to illustrate rapid prototyping in the mindstorms/simulink integrated platform

LEGO© Mindstorms is a widely spread affordable education robotic platform, that has recently gained native support from the Mathworks© simulation environment Simulink. The pros and cons of the integrated Mindstorms/Simulink framework are actually illustrated through a complex model based control design project featuring a self-stabilized bicycle, that represents a proper example of the rapid prototyping capability of the platform. The importance of such an integration is discussed taking into account the history and the results of the LEGO-based learning activities held at the Control Systems Laboratory of the University of Florence for graduate and undergraduate courses.