Automatic docking and charging station for a mobile robot platform

Automation with mobile robots has been gaining attention recently and has been widely adopted by companies from the various sector, the most significant will be the warehouse logistics of the ecommerce business. In warehouse logistics, mobile robots can help in reducing the time for retrieving the item, and greatly reduce the error which can result in the optimization of the overall process. In order to maximize efficiency, the mobile robots should be able to work 24/7 without little to no human supervision. To achieve this, the challenge lies in the duration of the power supplied to the mobile robots to keep it working. Hence, the power management of the mobile robot is a crucial factor. One of the research topics regarding this factor is the automatic docking and charging of the robot’s battery, with little to no human intervention in the battery recharging process. In this report, the objective is to develop a docking system for a contacting charger with one active side and one or no passive side. A monochrome camera is used for perception in pose adjustment and the Hokuyo URG-04LX Laser Range Finder is used for perception in checking the orientation at the check point and whether the robot docked successfully. The station implemented in the docking system has no active peripherals and does not provide large flexibility to compensate for the entry error. An experiment is carried out to test the effectiveness of the docking system proposed in this report, the result showed a 100% success rate with an average of 2.89 trials among 70 runs. Some method to improve the result with the reconstruction of the station or the implementation of a wireless charger is discussed in this report. The proposed docking system in this report provides a very base fundamental solution to the power management of mobile robots for the purpose of process automation. This can optimize and enhance the efficiency in various fields such as ecommerce warehouse logistics, service sector, manufacturing line and others.Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering