Development of a Mobile Platform for Security Robot

With the development of society and economy, more and more high buildings and large mansions come forth, it is imperative to seek an automatic patrol solution. The development of a mobile robot platform is presented in this paper, which includes basic design principles, mechanical design, motion control, sensors system and implementation of modular software design. The hardware platform is equipped with two differential driven wheels including shaft encoders for motion tracking. The system also contained several ultrasonic sensors for obstacle detection and avoidance. A couple of cameras were equipped on the system to record and send the images/video of the environment back to the central control room. The control system is based on a novel controller WinCon-8k and laptop PC platform. The WinCon-8k is responsible for the movement of the system, environmental sensing and decision making. Windows CE is used for the function of wireless networking and communication with the central control room. Finally, a cooperative supermarket providing an extraordinary test bed permits to establish meaningful statistics over 3 months (from August 10 to November 13). Several experiments were conducted to verify the current capability of the mobile robot platform. From the results of experiments, the mobile platform shows satisfactory performance in motion control, positioning, patrolling and monitoring the environment.