Semiautonomous industrial mobile manipulation for industrial applications

The mobile industrial manipulator(MIM) which combines the advantages of both the mobile robot and industrial robot and owns powerful mobility, flexibility and functionality will be the next generation of robots. However fully autonomous MIM performing various tasks in unstructured or semi-structured environment is very challenging in autonomous localization & navigation, object identification, control and coordination. However, there is a demand in industry for MIMs to be deployed in hazardous, dangerous and/or remotely environments. Therefore, a semi-autonomous MIM is investigated to perform industrial operations. An MIM prototype using a mobile platform and an industrial robot is developed. Manual and autonomous methods are proposed and implemented to control the prototype manually and autonomously. Experiments using the prototype were performed. Experimental results demonstrate that the robot can run autonomously if there is no ambiguity and the operators can interrupt the autonomous mode at any time if needed. The developed prototype and proposed methods have big potential in industrial applications.