Development of 3D printed rapid omni-directional mecanum mobile manipulator

Abstract

The collaborative robot, or cobot, has been advancing rapidly in combination with various new technologies such as AI and vision. The necessity of research on the cobot is also on the rise in universities; however, the cost of purchasing related machines is substantially high. This study has solved this problem by 3D printing. The most expensive component when manufacturing the cobot from the hardware perspective is the reducer. A manipulator with six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) was manufactured by replacing an expensive reducer with planetary and cycloid gear type 3D printed reducers. Furthermore, the mecanum in-wheel motor equipped with a 3D printed cycloid reducer was developed to increase the usability of the mecanum mobile platform interior space. The mobile manipulator was developed by combining a 6-DOF manipulator and mecanum mobile platform capable of high-speed running. Gazebo simulation was implemented to verify the task-space motion control performance of the mobile manipulator with respect to the velocity input. A demonstration of our method can be seen in the video: https://youtu.be/Soy8rdF-JGU.