Indoor Guidance and delivery robot

Project Title

Indoor Guidance and delivery robot

Project Area of Specialization RoboticsProject Summary

Robots are being used to assist the human in performing daily routine operations. The project is about design of an Autonomous Guidance and Delivery Robot. The motivation behind the project is to reduce the labor cost in hotels, industrial zones and hospitals. Proposed design can also replace human work force during pandemic situations like COVID19 to reduce the risk of humans getting infected. Proposed robot will autonomously navigate and find its path to deliver packages from one location to another. Robot will also detect and avoid obstacle on its path using LiDAR to reach the destination. On reaching the destination, robot will intimate the recipient and send a secret code through message or email for authenticated delivery. Recipient will enter the secret code to receive the package. After the delivery, robot will go back to the base station. Proposed autonomous design can replace labor in warehouses and service crew in hotels.

Project Objectives

Main objectives of the project are:

• Replacement of Room service crew in hotels and guesthouses
• Efficient and timely packages delivery in Warehouses
• Reduction in labor cost in the industry
• Reduction in human infection ration during pandemic situations
• Tour guides in industries and academic institutions

Project Implementation Method

Project implementation consists of both hardware design and firmware development on embedded platform. Implementation details of various blocks are given below:

Embedded controller

Microcontroller is used for software and hardware interfacing to perform different actions. Main microcontroller is used to control the movement of robot; robot can get input from sensors and perform calculations accordingly to reach the destination. Microcontroller processing speed should be fast enough to perform calculations at run time and decide which operation has to be performed at that time. It would be controlling multiple devices at the same time.

Obstacle Avoidance

It is very difficult for robot to move in crowdie environment. A sensor is required which can detect the crowd and respectively give information to the controller so that controller can give instruction to robot to reach its destination autonomously. So for this purpose a sensor is used in this project which will be helping robot to avoid obstacles autonomously.

Motor Assembly

Motor assembly is the most important part of moving robots. To drive the motor a motor driver is required because the microcontrollers cannot provide values of current in amperes to drive the motors. So the motor drivers are required to give the current to motor so they could produce torque and speed. To control the motion of the robot and to move the robot a motor is required to perform this task.

Mapping and Localization

Mapping and localization for indoor environment is very much different from outdoor environment. Mapping and localization are one of the most fundamental requirements for robot to navigate autonomously. If the robot is getting its location correctly then it is very easy for robot to reach its destination correctly. There would be multiple tags in the surrounding of robot which will transmit waves and reader of robot will receive these waves and give information to controller. When controller will get information from reader it will find the current position of robot.

Benefits of the Project

Following are the benefits of this robot in real life:

• Reduction in Labor Cost-Robot can be used to reduce the labor cost as many companies have people especially for to deliver packages inside the company, instead of those people this robot can be used
• Tour Guide- Robot can also be used as tour guide in industries and academics where official delegates came for to check working, robot can guide them
• Reduced Employee’s Life Risk- Robot can be used reduce the risk of employees to get hurt in pandemic situations i.e. Covid-19 and in industries like chemicals or nuclear where the human beings can be infected from environment
• Package Delivery- Robot can deliver package autonomously in offices that will reduce the expense of pay of that person who work in offices just for package delivery. Robot could carry medicine to that person who is infected by any virus that can infect other person by breathing in that environment
• Autonomous Vacuum Cleaner-Robot can be used for cleaning of corridor of any building, rooms of hotel and patient rooms in hospital

Technical Details of Final Deliverable Motor Assembly is the most important part of moving robots. To drive the motor a motor driver is required because the microcontrollers cannot provide values of current in amperes to drive the motors. So the motor drivers are required to give the current to motor so they could produce torque and speed. To control the motion of the robot and to move the robot a motor is required to perform this task. So for this purpose motor is used to move the robot as required to reach the destination and to produce torque and speed which will be doing as per the instruction of controller. Raspberry Pi can be programmed in the two languages python and scratch. It can perform different operations like any desktop computer can do. It is like a mini computer while Arduino is considered as a part of it. There is no onboard memory of it so there is a slot where SD card was inserted. It can act as a hard drive. The Raspberry Pi 3 includes a new Broadcom BCM2837 SoC with a 64-bit processor for the first time a 1.2GHz quad core ARM Cortex-A53 CPU that the company claims are roughly 10 times faster than the processor in the original model. A raspberry pi can be optionally operated with any generic USB computer keyboard and mouse. RFID based localization is performed through Radio Frequency based systems for indoor positioning such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is a key enabler technology for the IoT due to its cost-effective, high readability rates, automatic identification and, importantly, its energy efficiency characteristic. RFID Systems consist of Antenna’s connected to RFID readers. These antennas send back the captured information from sensed tags to the reader for further location processing. In LiDAR based Obstacle avoidance laser pulses emitted from a LiDAR system reflect from objects both on and above the ground surface: vegetation, buildings, bridges, and so on. One emitted laser pulse can return to the LiDAR sensor as one or many returns. Any emitted laser pulse that encounters multiple reflection surfaces as it travels toward the ground is split into as many returns as there are reflective surfaces.

Final prototype of robot consists of moving robot performing indoor localization and obstacle avoidance autonomously. When robot will reach its final destination it will communicate with customer to receive the package.

Final Deliverable of the Project HW/SW integrated systemCore Industry ITOther Industries Education Core Technology RoboticsOther Technologies Internet of Things (IoT)Sustainable Development Goals Good Health and Well-Being for PeopleRequired Resources

Item Name	Type	No. of Units	Per Unit Cost (in Rs)	Total (in Rs)
			Total in (Rs)	69400
Raspberry Pi	Equipment	1	10000	10000
DC Gear motor	Equipment	4	1500	6000
Motor Drivers	Equipment	2	800	1600
LiDAR	Equipment	1	13000	13000
5s Lipo battery	Equipment	2	6400	12800
RFID reader	Equipment	1	4500	4500
RFID tags	Equipment	6	1000	6000
Base	Equipment	1	4000	4000
Speaker	Equipment	1	1500	1500
Miscellaneous	Miscellaneous	1	10000	10000