Mobile robot electronic system with a network and microcontroller based interface

Abstract

Nowadays mobile robots are expected to be a desire at several services to afford man facilities and increase safety in any kind of duties.

Mobility is a key issue in robotics and a challenging subject for any research and development. It combines cognitive capabilities focused on sensorial input and human interaction with intelligent control of the drive systems and requires real mechatronics engineering solutions to enable robust and reliable operation.

In the European Centre for Mechatronics [W1] mobile robots have been research subjects for years. A mobile platform with semi-autonomous functionality has been developed years ago. It has been used as a demonstration and test platform to study mobility and cognitive control.

In the University of Minho [W3] and RWTH University [W2] that kind of research is also important and the industry support gives a solid development sign to the institutions.

As the control system capacity on board of the vehicle has reached limits, a new system architecture with more powerful controller elements was planned to replace the old one.

In this context the key objective of the project was to design and develop a new embedded system capable of controlling the mobile platform drives using ATMega microcontroller technology.