Economical Mobile Robot Design Prototype and Simulation for Industry 4.0 Applications

Autonomous mobile robots received a rising research interest, with the appearance of complex cyber-physical system applications, like Industry 4.0. Related scenarios require not only some degree of autonomous capabilities of the control software but also tight interaction between humans as well. In this paper, a prototype autonomous mobile robot of such functionalities is presented with additionally aiming cost-effective construction. The robot is currently capable of performing basic tasks, like traversing to a goal configuration, mapping the environment, and detecting and avoiding obstacles. To allow the versatile extension with additional cyber-physical software, the control software interfaces the Robot Operating System (ROS), a popular framework in robotic research. During the development of software and hardware, simulation has been heavily utilized. This allowed an iterative development and the use of verification in the early development phases.