An accurate and efficient navigation system for omnidirectional robots in industrial environments

Enhanced logistics is widely regarded as a key technology to increase flexibility and cost efficiency of today’s factories. For example, fully autonomous transport vehicles aim to gradually replace conveyor belts, guided vehicles, and manual labor. In this context, especially omnidirectional robots are appealing thanks to their advanced maneuvering capabilities. In industrial applications, however, accuracy as well as safety and efficiency are key requirements for successful navigation systems. In this paper, we present an accurate navigation system for omnidirectional robots. Our system includes dedicated modules for mapping, localization, trajectory generation and robot control. It has been designed for accurate execution by devising smooth, curvature continuous trajectories, by planning appropriate velocities and by accounting for platform and safety constraints. In this way, it completely utilizes the maneuvering capabilities of omnidirectional robots and optimizes trajectories with respect to time of travel. We present extensive experimental evaluations in simulation and in changing real-world environments to demonstrate the robustness and accuracy of our system. This work has partly been supported by the European Commission under grant agreement numbers FP7-248258-First-MM, FP7-260026-TAPAS, and FP7-248873-RADHAR. Christoph Sprunk, Wolfram Burgard Department of Computer Science, University of Freiburg, Germany, E-mail: {sprunkc,burgard}@informatik.uni-freiburg.de Boris Lau E-mail: [email protected] Patrick Pfaff KUKA Laboratories GmbH, Augsburg, Germany, E-mail: [email protected] Fig. 1 The KUKA Moiros robot using our system for accurate omnidirectional navigation during a demonstration at the Hannover Messe 2013 fair. Our system accounts for platform and safety constraints and reliably navigated for several days in this inspection task for wind turbine blades.