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Unibotics: open ROS-based online framework for practical learning of robotics in higher education

Publicated to:Multimedia Tools And Applications. - 2023-11-14 (), DOI: 10.1007/s11042-023-17514-z

Authors: Roldán-Alvarez, D; Cañas, JM; Valladares, D; Arias-Perez, P; Mahna, S

Affiliations

JdeRobot Org - Author
Univ Politecn Madrid - Author
UNIV REY JUAN CARLOS - Author

Abstract

Robotics provides an increasing number of solutions for real-life problems, from autonomous driving to automatic cleaning, inspection and logistics. The demand of robotics education to train future engineers is also growing, both in regular degrees at universities and also in massive open online courses (MOOCs). Beyond theory lectures, robotics education typically requires hands-on and practiced robot programming to be effective and let the student develop the desired skills. This paper presents Unibotics, an open online learning platform that allows editing and running robot programs from the browser, and provides more than 20 academic units on service robotics, autonomous driving, drones, and mobile robotics. It uses state-of-the art open source robot simulator (Gazebo) and robot middleware (ROS), and so it is extensible with new exercises. It is intended as a tool for practical learning in robotics engineering university courses. The platform has been used by 130 students from four different university degrees. Furthermore, it has been experimentally validated at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (URJC) Master Degree in Computer Vision with 22 students.

Keywords

Distance learningEngineering educationExperiencesIntelligent roboticsParallelPerformancePlatformScienceSimulationsStudentsTechnology

Quality index

Bibliometric impact. Analysis of the contribution and dissemination channel

The work has been published in the journal Multimedia Tools And Applications due to its progression and the good impact it has achieved in recent years, according to the agency Scopus (SJR), it has become a reference in its field. In the year of publication of the work, 2023, it was in position , thus managing to position itself as a Q1 (Primer Cuartil), in the category .

From a relative perspective, and based on the normalized impact indicator calculated from the Field Citation Ratio (FCR) of the Dimensions source, it yields a value of: 6.23, which indicates that, compared to works in the same discipline and in the same year of publication, it ranks as a work cited above average. (source consulted: Dimensions Jun 2025)

Specifically, and according to different indexing agencies, this work has accumulated citations as of 2025-06-14, the following number of citations:

  • WoS: 4
  • Scopus: 5

Impact and social visibility

From the perspective of influence or social adoption, and based on metrics associated with mentions and interactions provided by agencies specializing in calculating the so-called "Alternative or Social Metrics," we can highlight as of 2025-06-14:

  • The use, from an academic perspective evidenced by the Altmetric agency indicator referring to aggregations made by the personal bibliographic manager Mendeley, gives us a total of: 26.
  • The use of this contribution in bookmarks, code forks, additions to favorite lists for recurrent reading, as well as general views, indicates that someone is using the publication as a basis for their current work. This may be a notable indicator of future more formal and academic citations. This claim is supported by the result of the "Capture" indicator, which yields a total of: 26 (PlumX).

With a more dissemination-oriented intent and targeting more general audiences, we can observe other more global scores such as:

  • The Total Score from Altmetric: 7.25.
  • The number of mentions on the social network X (formerly Twitter): 10 (Altmetric).