Design and simulation of autonomous robotic units for collaborative tasks

Collaborative robotics is a technology inspired by nature. It is an approach in which the number of homogenous, simple physical robots coordinate to perform a task. The purpose is to emulate supportive performance either from the communication of the autonomous robots with the environment or the mutual interactions of these robots with each other. One of the robots, designated as the ‘master’ or ‘controller,’ and the others, play the role of ‘slave’ or ‘worker.’ We have demonstrated the docking mechanism of the autonomous robots ensuring collision-free operations, finding the master in an unknown location, and precise docking and embarking. For the above task, we use a PID (Proportional-Integral-Derivative) algorithm for controlling the drive motors. We have also demonstrated the mapping of a sector using the robotic unit. The robots will be designed using different modules in SolidWorks and simulate using the ROS gazebo and Rviz. The following pages are an overview of the collaborative robotic technology and list the different types of mapping approaches