An intelligent docking station manager for multiple mobile service robots

Robot docking stations are of utmost important for service robots like security robots and automated guided vehicles in warehouses which are in continuous operation, and hence require frequent recharging. While a lot of research has been done on designing the actual hardware of the docking station itself, a practical situation of intelligently managing a limited number of docking stations in case of multiple robots has largely been ignored. We propose a docking station manager for multiple mobile service robots, which intelligently allots a mobile robot to the most appropriate docking station, based on the robot's task priority, location awareness of the robot and the docking station, power left in robot, and request order. We demonstrate, through experiments in real environment, that the proposed manager can function intelligently and resolve conflicts when the docking stations are fully occupied. We experimentally tested the proposed station manager in different conditions of varying task priorities, power levels, and emergency conditions of the robots, and found it to be robust to intelligently allocate the most appropriate robot with the appropriate charging dock.