Aplicaciones

Since the modern big laboratories have distributed rooms and elevators, the mobile robots have to open and close some doors automatically to form an automated process as demonstrated in Fig. 3-5. So the high quality robot-door integrating performance is desired in the mobile robot transportation.

(a) (b)

Figure 3-5: Laboratory door-opening/closing by the running mobile robots: (a) Automatic controlling for the laboratory doors; and (b) Automatic controlling for the elevator doors

Several important technical issues have to be considered to develop an effective robot-door interface for the multi-floors, which include the monitoring of the door status, the robot-door collision avoidance, the door based global path planning, etc. All of those upper mentioned technical challenges are considered in this section. Three solutions are presented for the robot-door integration as follows: (a) based on the adoption of the ceiling landmarks in the application, it has a chance to identify all the doors of the laboratories and the elevators with a unique HEX ID. The mobile robots can use these identified IDs to recognize the correct doors during the transportation process; (b) all of these doors are included inside the multi-floor path planning procedure so that the running mobile robots can control the corresponding doors correctly if necessary; (c) since the controlling features between the rooms and elevators are different, two controlling strategies are proposed. For the doors of the laboratory rooms, a wireless based controlling system is developed. For the doors of the elevators, a hybrid controlling method is designed; and (d) the secure protecting strategies are proposed for the failure door-opening/closing cases. When the mobile robots cannot read the real-time status of the front doors through the built wireless communication network, they will stop moving then start the error-handling process. At the same time, the robot on-board ultrasonic sensors are also adopted to detect the

mechanical status of the doors.

Based on the proposed multi-floor robot path planning method, as shown in Fig. 3-6, not only the arm manipulating and the robot motion controlling points are included, but also a number of assisting points including the door opening/closing points and the power recharging points are involved. All of the laboratory doors are marked with a unique transportation point number. When the robots reach those door points, their corresponding RBCs will send the remote commands to control the doors. At the same time, when any path planning initializes in the IMRTS system, those door points will be covered to decide the shortest transportation paths by considering their geometrical connecting conditions to the adjacent map points. All robots can open and close the doors of the laboratory rooms.

Figure 3-6: The shortest path planning for the mobile robot transportation

Additionally, as given in Fig.3-7, a wireless based controlling system named as ADAM controller is proposed to connect all laboratory doors and each ADAM controller is distributed a sole IP address [165]. On the other side, all of the robot on-board laptops (RBCs) are also given a unique IP address. Based on this wireless structure, The RBCs and the ADAM controllers can exactly recognize each other during the movements of the mobile robots. The developed door GUI of the RBC is demonstrated in Fig. 3-8. From Fig.3-8, it can be seen that all the doors are monitored by the corresponding RBC centers and any identified RBC can open/close those doors flexibly. When the mobile robots reach the defined door points, they only need to send out a door command to the

related I/O port of the ADAM controller. Robot Remote Center-RRC Laboratory Door Controller-LDC (ADAM I/O Module 6060) Robot On-board Center-RBC #1 Automated Door #1 I/O #3 I/O #1 Robot On-board Center-RBC #2 Automated Door #N Automated Door #2 I/O #2 Router HWMS 192.168.7.1 …

Figure 3-7: Wireless communication channel for the robot-door controlling [165]

Figure 3-8: A case of the status of the automated doors in a RBC center [165]

For the possible failure situations of the mobile robot-door integration, there are two protecting levels used as follows: The first one is to protect the robots and the doors. A double-checking process is provided for those door points. If a mobile robot's on-board RBC cannot get the feedback messages from the corresponding door ADAM controller in any cases, the RBC will pause the robotic motion module until it gets the reply from the door controllers. The second one is for the whole transportation process. If a transportation task is blocked by a door-opening problem, the selected mobile robot is asked to report the door error message to the remote RRC center and the highest HWMS timely. It means if the robot's on-board RBC still cannot know the real-time status (opened or closed) of the front door after several reconnections, it will terminate the robot's motion process and switch to the error-sending process. Both of those two protecting levels have been embedded in the IMRTS system. Two real system log-files recorded by the RBCs is demonstrated in Fig.3-9 and Fig.3-10, respectively. From

Fig.3-9 and Fig.3-10, it can be seen that the mobile robot (i.e., Robot 4D) executed the proposed two protecting levels rightly (i.e., to stop and send out an error message).

Figure 3-9: A system log-file in the RBC monitoring the door opening/closing process [165]

Figure 3-10: A system log-file in the RRC storing the door controlling error for the HWMS [165]

3.5

Intelligent Robot Localization Signal Filter