Implementation of motion generation strategy for mobile robots with RFID sensors

Abstract

Some modern Robotics platforms use Radio Frequency IDenti cation (RFID) technology in various elds of application (industrial, service . . . ). RFID systems are composed of antennas, readers and tags. RFID tag consists of a memory storing information. The reader reads/writes information from/on the tags through the antennas. In robotic context, the tags can contain information about the environment such as obstacles, humans, robots. . . . This master thesis was carried in the Center of Development of Advanced Technologies (CDTA) and the main goal was to integrate a new software and hardware architecture for the di erential drive Robotic platform, with Integrating RFID Sensors in the motion strategy.

The Proposed architecture was based on a Single-board Computer (RaspberryPi) embedded platform, a microcontroller based card and Robot Operating System (ROS) for the software im-plementation and the approach execution. The embedded platform has to control the movement of the mobile robot, and to read sensorial information (RFID, Laser measurement Sensor,. . . ). The navigation module should be introduced with integrating RFID technology. The robot takes decisions of regulating its speed or setting a new destination based on the information contained in the RFID tags it receives. This can be very bene cial in an industrial environments where a mobile robot can carry products to di erent lines in the production process based on the RFID tag attached to them.

The value added by the architecture is to provide a fully functional and scalable di erential drive robotics platform with integrating RFID technology for further research and development projects.