Introduction to Autonomous Mobile Robots, Second Edition

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. Introduction to autonomous mobile robots.-2nd ed. / Roland Siegwart, Illah R. Nourbakhsh, and Da-vide Scaramuzza. p. cm.-(Intelligent robotics and autonomous agents series) Includes bibliographical references and index. Robotics has achieved its greatest success to date in the world of industrial manufacturing. Robot arms, or manipulators, comprise a $ 2 billion industry. Bolted at its shoulder to a specific position in the assembly line, the robot arm can move with great speed and accuracy to perform repetitive tasks such as spot welding and painting (figure 1.1). In the electronics industry, manipulators place surface-mounted components with superhuman precision, making the portable telephone and laptop computer possible. Yet, for all of their successes, these commercial robots suffer from a fundamental disadvantage: lack of mobility. A fixed manipulator has a limited range of motion that depends Figure 1.1 Picture of auto assembly plant-spot welding robot of KUKA and a parallel robot Delta of SIG Dem-aurex SA (invented at EPFL [296]) during packaging of chocolates. 2 Chapter 1 on where it is bolted down. In contrast, a mobile robot would be able to travel throughout the manufacturing plant, flexibly applying its talents wherever it is most effective. This book focuses on the technology of mobility: how can a mobile robot move unsu-pervised through real-world environments to fulfill its tasks? The first challenge is locomo-tion itself. How should a mobile robot move, and what is it about a particular locomotion mechanism that makes it superior to alternative locomotion mechanisms? Hostile environments such as Mars trigger even more unusual locomotion mechanisms (figure 1.2). In dangerous and inhospitable environments, even on Earth, such teleoperated systems have gained popularity (figures 1.3-1.6). In these cases, the low-level complexities of the robot often make it impossible for a human operator to control its motions directly. The human performs localization and cognition activities but relies on the robot's control scheme to provide motion control. For example, Plustech's walking robot provides automatic leg coordination while the human operator chooses an overall direction of travel (figure 1.3). Figure 1.6 depicts an underwater vehicle that controls three propellers to stabilize the robot submarine autonomously in spite of underwater turbulence and water currents while the operator chooses position goals for the submarine to achieve. …