A mobile manipulator is a

robot A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...

system built from a robotic manipulator arm mounted on a mobile platform. Such systems unite the advantages of mobile platforms and robotic manipulator arms and reduce their drawbacks. For instance, the mobile platform extends the workspace of the arm, whereas an arm offers several operational functionalities.

Description

A mobile manipulation system offers a dual advantage of mobility offered by a mobile platform and

dexterity Fine motor skill (or dexterity) is the coordination of small muscles in movement with the eyes, hands and fingers. The complex levels of manual dexterity that humans exhibit can be related to the nervous system. Fine motor skills aid in the growt ...

offered by the manipulator. The mobile platform offers extended

workspace Workspace is a term used in various branches of engineering and economic development. Business development Workspace refers to small premises provided, often by local authorities or economic development agencies, to help new businesses to estab ...

to the manipulator. The extra degrees of freedom of the mobile platform also provide user with more choices. However, the operation of such a system is challenging because of the many degrees of freedom and the unstructured environment that it performs in. General system composition: * Mobile platform * Robot manipulator *

Vision Vision, Visions, or The Vision may refer to: Perception Optical perception * Visual perception, the sense of sight * Visual system, the physical mechanism of eyesight * Computer vision, a field dealing with how computers can be made to gain un ...

* Tooling

Motivation

At the moment mobile manipulation is a subject of major focus in development and research environments, and mobile manipulators, either autonomous or teleoperated, are used in many areas, e.g. space exploration, military operations, home-care and health-care. However, within the industrial field the implementation of mobile manipulators has been limited, although the needs for intelligent and flexible automation are present. In addition, the necessary technology entities (mobile platforms, robot manipulators, vision and tooling) are, to a large extent, available off-the-shelf components. A reason for this is that the manufacturing industries act traditionally and, therefore, have reluctance in taking risks by implementing new technologies. Also, within the field of industrial mobile manipulation the centre of attention has been on optimization of the individual technologies, especially robot manipulators and tooling, while the integration, use and application have been neglected. This means that few implementations of mobile robots, in production environments, have been reported – e.g. and.

Timeline

State of the art

One recent example is the mobile manipulator "Little Helper" from the Department of Production at Aalborg University.Research project; Industrial maturation and exploitation of mobile manipulators – more info
MachineVision.dk
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Notes and references

External links