CAIRO-MM-1: Low cost autonomous mobile manipulator for research and education

This paper presents the development of a low cost mobile manipulator called the CAERO-MM-1 for the purpose of research and education. The hardware consists of 3 main parts, the 4-DOF manipulator with 2 webcams at its end effector which imitates a stereo camera, the mobile platform with tracks for navigation and the internal computer that is connected to various sensors and actuators. CAIRO-MM-1 features the servomotors as the arm actuators and DC motors for the tracks. The sensors include the wheel encoders and the inertia measurement unit to aid the autonomous navigation of the mobile platform. The software, as well as its architecture is described. The software modules are developed using the .NET framework on the Windows 8 platform. In its experiments, CAIRO-MM-1 is tested for its functional and behavioral features and results show that CAIRO-MM-1 is now suitable for research and educational purposes.