A robotic vehicle for freight delivery in urban areas

Abstract

The authors present new concept architecture of light duty full electrical vehicle for efficient sustainable urban freight transport that allows the movement of two Euro Pallets 800x1200 mm (or boxes with similar bottom part). Following a sustainable and efficient mobility approach, a robotic handling device has been designed and positioned on-board of the vehicle. The handling device realizes the loading-unloading operations on the right side of the vehicle and from the ground to the vehicle platform. Active suspensions of the vehicle have been designed to adapt the stiffness to the payload and at modifying the chassis height on the ground for travel and loading-unloading tasks. © 2014 DIME Universita Di Genova.