Prototyping of Fully Autonomous Indoor Patrolling Mobile Robots

Abstract

In this chapter, the design and prototyping of an indoor patrolling mobile robot is presented. This robot employs a modular design strategy by using the ROS (Robot Operating System) software framework, which allows for an agile development and testing process. The primary modules - omni-directional drive system, localization, navigation, and autonomous charging - are described in detail. Special efforts have been put into the design of these modules to make them reliable and robust in order to achieve autonomous patrolling without human intervention. With experimental tests, the authors show that an indoor mobile robot patrolling autonomously in a typical office environment is realizable.