Flexible combination of vision, control and drive in autonomous mobile robots

Abstract

We present a universal modular robot architecture. A robot consists of the following intelligent modules: central control unit (CCU), drive, actuators, a vision unit and sensor input unit. Software and hardware of the robot fit into this structure. We define generic interface protocols between these units. If the robot has to solve a new application and is equipped with a different drive, new actuators and different sensors, only the program for the new application has to be loaded into the CCU. The interfaces to the drive, the vision unit and the other sensors are plug-and-play interfaces. The only constraint for the CCU-program is the set of commands for the actuators.