On the design of the ROBO-PARTNER Intra-factory logistics autonomous robot

The trends of manufacturing have now begun to call for a more adaptive and dynamic shop floor in the automation industry. The advancements in mobile robotics of recent decades have inspired and cemented a belief that multiple autonomous mobile robotic agents, often cooperatively sharing the workspace with humans, will significantly contribute to a truly flexible shop floor of the future. This article reports on the design specifications for one such robotic agent, the Intra-factory Mobile Assistant Unit (IMAU), able to carry material boxes between supermarkets and assembly stations, dynamically avoiding obstacles, throughout the shop floor. The solution will make shop floor logistics more flexible, reduce the allocated space for buffers, and, also, ease the human workload. The article will cover the sensing, actuation, communication, software architecture, and the seamless integration into the plant's execution system, which shape the autonomous logistics robot to be deployed into a working automotive shop floor during the ROBO-PARTNER project.