Modified hardware design for cooperative mobile robots

This paper described the changes in the basic design of our mobile robot, ACE Rover I, but before that the original design of the ACE Rover I is discussed in brief. The proposed rover called ACE Rover I is a four-wheel drive, four-wheel steering, all-terrain autonomous rover. The first design had a lower level, which contained the wheel motors with encoders, a steering motor, tilt switch to determine surface inclination, bumpers to sense if the robot has bumped into an obstacle, an array of batteries, and four IR sensors to avoid abrupt surface changes such as drop-offs. The upper level has eight IR sensors to avoid large obstacles, an analog compass to determine direction, and the controller circuit board. The modified hardware design now has a sliding suspension system attached to the wheel unit, so that the robot can prevent mechanical failures due to shocks and vibrations in rugged terrain. With the introduction of the suspension system, we had to rethink the method of transmitting torque to each wheel. The prospect of adding a sonar ring or a vision system is also discussed in the paper. Towards the end of the paper, a brief description of previous approaches to localization and path planning with the available sensors on the ACE Rover I is given.