Toolchain for a Mobile Robot Applied on the DLR Scout Rover

The Scout rover currently under development at DLR's Institute of System Dynamics and Control (SR) is a novel and inherently robust cave exploration rover, based on rimless wheels and biologically inspired locomotion mechanisms. The development of such an advanced robotic system requires many tools and solutions to cooperate for the benefit of the project. In addition, the special rover structure with segments and rimless wheels sets further requirements on the toolchain, e. g. for the controller structure and interface to human operators. This article is going to detail what challenges the development team faced in this field and how these were overcome with the selection and adaption of appropriate tools. Advantages and drawbacks of the solution are shown and alternatives indicated. Hints for other projects facing similar challenges are given. The central tool is Dymola, a modeling and simulation environment for the Modelica modeling language, that is used for simulation of the rover as well as generation of the binary code that runs the prototype. It is expanded with commercial or self-coded libraries and tools for the communication, actuators and sensors. These are mainly implemented in the C language because Dymola translates the Modelica code to C and then uses a common C compiler to generate the binary code or simulation executable. To the best of the authors' knowledge the current solution is novel and unique on its own but easily adaptable to other mobile robotic exploration systems. It is versatile, enables switching of components and remains easy to adapt and expand. The toolchain has played an important role in achieving good results with the first prototype in relatively short time.