The Design and Development of an Omni-Directional Mobile Robot Oriented to an Intelligent Manufacturing System

Sensors

Dan Zhang¹  Daoming Wang²  Yangang Ma²  Bin Zi²  Jun Qian² 

[1] Lassonde School of Engineering, York University, 4700 Keele Street, Toronto, ON M3J 1P3, Canada;School of Mechanical Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, 193 Tunxi Road, Hefei 230009, China;

关键词: omni-directional mobile robot;    localization;    extended Kalman filter (EKF);    intelligent manufacturing system;    design;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s17092073

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

In order to transport materials flexibly and smoothly in a tight plant environment, an omni-directional mobile robot based on four Mecanum wheels was designed. The mechanical system of the mobile robot is made up of three separable layers so as to simplify its combination and reorganization. Each modularized wheel was installed on a vertical suspension mechanism, which ensures the moving stability and keeps the distances of four wheels invariable. The control system consists of two-level controllers that implement motion control and multi-sensor data processing, respectively. In order to make the mobile robot navigate in an unknown semi-structured indoor environment, the data from a Kinect visual sensor and four wheel encoders were fused to localize the mobile robot using an extended Kalman filter with specific processing. Finally, the mobile robot was integrated in an intelligent manufacturing system for material conveying. Experimental results show that the omni-directional mobile robot can move stably and autonomously in an indoor environment and in industrial fields.

【 授权许可】

Unknown