Mobile manipulator


A mobile manipulator is a robot system built from a robotic manipulator arm mounted on a mobile platform. Such systems combine the advantages of mobile platforms and robotic manipulator arms and reduce their drawbacks. For instance, the mobile platform extends the workspace of the arm, whereas an arm offers several operational functionalities.

Description

A mobile manipulation system offers a dual advantage of mobility offered by a mobile platform and dexterity offered by the manipulator. The mobile platform offers unlimited workspace to the manipulator. The extra degrees of freedom of the mobile platform also provide user with more choices. However, the operation of such a system is challenging because of the many degrees of freedom and the unstructured environment that it performs in.
General system composition:
At the moment mobile manipulation is a subject of major focus in development and research environments, and
mobile manipulators, either autonomous or teleoperated, are used in many areas, e.g. space exploration, military operations, home-care and health-care. However, within the industrial field the implementation of mobile manipulators has been limited, although the needs for intelligent and flexible automation are present. In addition, the necessary technology entities are, to a large extent, available off-the-shelf components.
A reason for this is that the manufacturing industries act traditionally and, therefore, have reluctance in
taking risks by implementing new technologies. Also, within the field of industrial mobile manipulation the
centre of attention has been on optimization of the individual technologies, especially robot manipulators
and tooling, while the integration, use and application have been neglected. This means that few implementations of mobile robots, in production environments, have been reported – e.g. and.

Timeline

YearRobot nameCompany / Research Institute
1996LAAS-CNRS, France
2000JaumeRobotic Intelligence Lab, Jaume I University, Spain
2004FAuStOUniversity of Verona, Italy
2006Neobotix GmbH, Germany
2009Department of Production, Aalborg University, Denmark
2012Robotnik Automation & Barrett Technologies, Spain & United States
2013Unbounded Robotics, United States
2013Robotnik Automation & Barrett Technologies, Spain & United States
2015AIMEN, Spain
2015Robotnik Automation & Kinova Robotics, Spain & Canada
2018MuR 205, Leibniz University Hanover, Germany

State of the art

One recent example is the mobile manipulator "Little Helper" from the Department of Production at Aalborg University.