Design and Development of a Shopping Assistance Robot

摘要

This paper discusses the design and development of a robot for use in environments that require interactive actions and decision-making, such as assistance in hospitals, airports, and hotel lobbies - the 'Shopping Assistance Robot’ or SAR. The core SAR unit consists of a mobile base platform that has sensors for safe navigation in a complex environment along with a humanoid-inspired superstructure designed for friendly interactions with human agents, with in-built electronics, sensor control units, and an arm for manipulation actions such as grasping and pick-and-place tasks. The SAR is then proposed to work in tandem with in-store cameras, integrated with a server, which provide cues to the SAR regarding ‘customers of interest’ and potential coordinates to target locations and navigation guidance. We also describe the design aspects of SAR and provide an analysis of the design of SAR in terms of structural integrity, human-robot interaction comfort, and cost. Finally, we discuss the results obtained from design analysis and describe the final fabrication and assembly of SAR with demonstrations of some of its basic capabilities in a test arena facility built at our laboratory. Subsequent trials demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed robot and help us identify key bottlenecks and directions for further work.