Introduction to Mobile Robots:
Robotics is very speedily growing and widely used branch of engineering. It have very large set of applications around, like in automobiles industry, electronics, computer industries, mechanical industries etc.
Now, we will move towards robots. Man is successful in creating the stationary robot and making its use for various applications. For example, robotic arm. Robotic arm is used in the automobile industries and electronics industries for automation purpose. These arms are very skilled in their work and perform the task in almost ideal time. Moreover, their operating cost is much less than the skilled human worker.
However, the main limitation of a robotic arm type stationary robots is that, it has to operate only in a defined area. Mobile robots are next to stationary robotic arms.
Mobile Robots/ Movable Robots:
As discussed before, mobile robot is movable, so it is necessary to have some locomotion system in it. Up till now, wheels and tracks are best options. Now a days, robots designers are looking towards newer ways of locomotion due to complexity in the operation of robot task. These ways includes, designing the robot having legs. Such robots have wider adaptation with working environment. Legged robots have necessary applications in the Defense and Aerospace Applications (Like NASA Projects). As stable robots start moving around in the uneven field, new problem arise which regard to the balancing of robot. This needs the installation of Leveling Mechanism in it.
Controlling The Mobile Robots:
No doubt, that to make robot work smarter and smarter designer have to install a wide types of sensors in it like distance sensors, level sensors, weight sensors etc. These sensors have the whole responsibility that the device will work as per design or not.
Mobile robots can be completely or partially controlled by the remote control devices. These devices communicates with robots through infrared or some similar medias. If area of working of robots is quite defined then direct wires could be used. But this limits the robot working area.
Again, robots can be autonomously controlled too. This is achieved by providing the program which pre-defines the robot task through program. Autonomous robots can act on their own, independent of any controller. The basic idea is to program the robot to respond to a certain way to outside stimuli.
General Applications of Mobile Robots:
Simple robots are used in homes and offices e.g. land moving robots whereas advanced autonomous robots like rover are used in space exploration. Micro robots are used for defense purposes and navigation. Mobile robots with stable legs will an important step in building stable humanoids.
