Mobile Manipulator for Autonomous Localization, Grasping and Precise Placement of Construction Material in a Semi-structured Environment
This addresses automation in construction and related industries, but it is incremental as it builds on existing mobile manipulator capabilities.
The paper tackles the problem of autonomous construction material handling by developing a mobile manipulator that localizes, grasps, and places materials in semi-structured environments without external positioning, achieving operation in both outdoor and indoor conditions with drone-assisted perception.
Mobile manipulators have the potential to revolutionize modern agriculture, logistics and manufacturing. In this work, we present the design of a ground-based mobile manipulator for automated structure assembly. The proposed system is capable of autonomous localization, grasping, transportation and deployment of construction material in a semi-structured environment. Special effort was put into making the system invariant to lighting changes, and not reliant on external positioning systems. Therefore, the presented system is self-contained and capable of operating in outdoor and indoor conditions alike. Finally, we present means to extend the perceptive radius of the vehicle by using it in cooperation with an autonomous drone, which provides aerial reconnaissance. Performance of the proposed system has been evaluated in a series of experiments conducted in real-world conditions.