Development of the mobile robot with a robot arm

Abstract

The paper develops a mobile platform, based on KNR controller manufactured by Barden-Powell International and National Instruments (NI). The core of KNR controller adopts NI Single-Board RIO 9606 embedded platform, which integrates diverse sensors, motor controllers, and image processing module within itself. The developed mobile platform makes use of light sensors and touch sensors for line tracking and detects the initial location, and utilizes "trapezoidal acceleration and deceleration" algorithm and Proportional-Integral-Derivative (PID) controller for precise motion control. Specifically, the developed motion platform takes advantages of NI LabVIEW Vision Assistant' image processing functionalities, like color threshold, dilation, erosion, and convex hull, for distance estimation. The motion platform embeds a robot arm with four degrees of freedom. The robot arm can catch the selected object moving to the assigned location by the image processing module, and put down the object.