The Robotino is mobile robot system developed by Festo Didactic. It is intended for educational and research use in industrial automation. It is capable of fully autonomous driving in a fleet of several robots and interacts with other parts of the Festo Modular Production System (MPS).
In order to fulfill a role in the SuperCyber program, the Robotino is required to autonomously move within a temporary arrangement of the MTS space. Initially the Robotino was made to follow a stretch of tape laid on the floor, however this was deemed to be obtrusive to the space and not an adequate demonstration of the robot’s autonomy. While the Robotino has an existing software ecosystem to enable autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance through Robotino Factory, concerns were raised about it’s capabilities in both the MTS space and the SuperCyber program where the environment is heavily occupied by participants.
After preliminary discussion, an initial plan was formed to both evaluate the performance of the Robotino’s existing software options, and investigate the use of less obtrusive positional indicators in the environment to address concerns of the performance of the existing localization systems for the Robotino (the means by which the Robotino estimates it’s position in space).
The included program drives the Robotino around a loop repeatedly, stopping at two locations for 10 seconds and then continuing.
Hokuyo Laser Scanner
Robotino Factory v2.4.2 https://packages.openrobotino.org/windows/robfactory/
Robotino View v4.0.4 https://packages.openrobotino.org/windows/robview/
Map, loaded into Robotino
Program, loaded into Robotino View