Development of prototype of a Unmanned Transport Robot for transport of construction materials

This paper presents the development of prototype unmanned transport robot for application at construction sites. The robot transports construction materials following a pre-configured reference path. Hardware configuration of the unmanned transport robot may be considered in three parts: the tracked vehicle system, the control system, and the multi-sensor system. The control strategy of unmanned transport consists of sensor fusion with an indirect Kalman filter for localization, path-tracking, and obstacle avoidance using ultra sonic sensors for safety on the construction site. Then, sensor fusion will combine odometry from encoders and heading angle from the IMU information to guide the robot along the reference path. Finally, we describe experimental results and compare and contrast the use of odometry from encoders alone, and together with heading angle data from the IMU.