Robotnik and the Eurecat technology centre have developed an extremely modular, autonomous and collaborative land robot intended for autonomous material transport in industry and construction with a design which delivers advanced human-robot collaboration.
Devised as part of the European COBOLLEAGUE project, the robot addresses autonomous navigation in outdoor industrial settings characterised by uneven terrain and a variety of static and dynamic obstacles.
It is a highly manoeuvrable, all-terrain modular mobile carrier for transporting loads of up to 200 kg. Its design includes features which enable people tracking, gesture recognition and speech-based control.
The robot can build a map of its surroundings and reliably and safely self-locate and navigate across it, plus it is able to perform both inter-plant transport and also last mile transport tasks. This map additionally helps to identify all obstacles together with any potential slopes, gaps and holes where the robot might fall over and also gather data on the construction site which can then be used in conjunction with the Building Information Modelling (BIM) system.
“The COBOLLEAGUE project once again shows how handy mobile robotics is for applications involving repetitive tasks, in this case by automating outdoor transport in industry and construction,” says Roberto Guzmán, CEO of Robotnik. “Backed by almost 20 years of experience in service robotics, we can tailor our general purpose robots to various verticals and deliver mobile solutions across a wide variety of applications and industries.”
“After more than a decade of R&D in localisation and autonomous navigation, in this project we have successfully developed 3D localisation and mapping which leverages the building model taken straight from BIM,” adds Daniel Serrano, director of Eurecat’s Robotics and Automation Unit. “This project demonstrates the potential of using service robots in the building industry where there is plenty of scope for the future.”
As part of the project, Robotnik has provided the mechatronics solution and developed the conceptual design, safety and human factors alongside business case validation and the industrial commitment. A new kinematic configuration has been devised which brings greater mobility to the RB-VOGUI robot chassis and enables it to undertake autonomous transport tasks in urban settings and in unstructured environments featuring challenging terrain. A 3D laser localisation and navigation system has also been developed and has been proven to perform robustly both indoors and outdoors.
Meanwhile, Eurecat has developed a BIM-based interface which processes 3D building information by adding structural data to a simultaneous localisation and mapping (SLAM) system used by a mobile robot. This allows the robot to access a 3D map of the reference model and determine its own location in the building environment, thus saving time and enabling it to navigate autonomously to a destination without first exploring the map.
Furthermore, Eurecat’s innovation makes it possible to track the status of the job and flag updates to the reference model, something which is a significant plus for the building industry. Eurecat also delivers the integration of a multimodal worker-robot interface which allows the robot to follow construction workers with complete safety.
COBOLLEAGUE has been backed by the ESMERA (European SMEs Robotics Applications) project in its call for robotic solutions to industrial challenges. ESMERA is a consortium made up of four technology centres (the Laboratory for Manufacturing Systems & Automation at the University of Patras, CEA LIST, the Tekniker Foundation and the Technical University of Munich) and three industrial facilitators (Blue Ocean Robotics, COMAU and RU Robots).
You can watch the demo video here
