Autonomous mobile robots for outdoor tasks

Abstract

This paper presents a low-cost hardware platform for outdoor robots, being suitable for education, industrial prototyping and private use. The choice of components is discussed, including platform, sensors and controller as well as GPS and image processing hardware. Furthermore, a software approach is proposed, allowing students and researchers to easily implement own algorithms for localization, navigation and the tasks to fulfill. Several robots can be integrated in a framework which connects various different hardware platforms, called the BOSPORUS network. Together with other components, they form an intelligent network for gathering sensor and image data, sensor data fusion, navigation and control of mobile platforms. The architecture of a reference platform on the campus of the Brandenburg University of Applied Sciences is presented and evaluated.