PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the interdisciplinary research field, autonomous industrial mobile manipulation (AIMM), with an emphasis on physical implementations and applications.Design/methodology/approachFollowing an introduction to AIMM, this paper investigates the missing links and gaps between the research and developments efforts and the real‐world application requirements, in order to bring the AIMM technology from laboratories to manufacturing environments. The investigation is based on 12 general application requirements for robotics: sustainability, configuration, adaptation, autonomy, positioning, manipulation and grasping, robot‐robot interaction, human‐robot interaction, process quality, dependability, and physical properties.FindingsThe concise yet comprehensive review provides both researchers (academia) and practitioners (industry) with a quick and gentle overview of AIMM. Furthermore, the paper identifies key open issues and promising research directions to realize real‐world integration and maturation of the AIMM technology.Originality/valueThis paper reviews the interdisciplinary research field, autonomous industrial mobile manipulation (AIMM).

This paper presents the concept "autonomous industrial mobile manipulation" (AIMM) based on the mobile manipulator "Little Helper" -an ongoing research project at Aalborg University, Denmark, concerning the development of an autonomous and flexible manufacturing assistant. The paper focuses on the contextual aspects and the working principles of AIMM. Furthermore, the paper deals with the design principles and overall hardware and software architectures of "Little Helper" from a functional and modular mechatronics point of view, in order to create a generic AIMM platform. The design challenges faced in the project is to integrate commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) and dedicated highly integrated systems into an autonomous mobile manipulator system with the ability to perform diverse tasks in industrial environments. We propose an action based domain specific communication language for AIMM for routine and task definition, in order to lower the entry barriers for the users of the technology. To demonstrate the "Little Helper" concept a full-scale prototype has been built and different application examples carried out. Experiences and knowledge gained from this show promising results regarding industrial integration, exploitation and maturation of the AIMM technology.

Increased customer needs and intensified global competition require intelligent and flexible automation. The interaction technology mobile robotics 1 addresses this, so it holds great potential within the industry.This paper presents the concepts, ideas and working principles of the mobile robot "Little Helper" 2 -an ongoing research project at Aalborg University, Denmark, concerning the development of an autonomous and flexible manufacturing assistant.To demonstrate the "Little Helper" concept a fullscale prototype has been built and experiments carried out. Experiences and knowledge gained from this show promising results regarding industrial integration, exploitation and maturation of mobile robotics.

This paper investigates the application potential for the technology-push manufacturing technology (TPMT) autonomous industrial mobile manipulation (AIMM), in order to link the conceptual ideas (academia) to actual manufacturing requirements (industry). The approach is based on the proposed TPMT methodology in a comprehensive industrial case study. More than 566 manufacturing tasks have been analyzed according to three main application areas (logistics, assistance, and service) to find their suitability for the AIMM technology. The conducted TPMT analysis shows that AIMM has great potential within the manufacturing industries. More than two thirds of the analyzed manufacturing tasks are solvable with AIMM within the next few years. The AIMM technology, at its current stage, finds most suitable applications within logistics (e.g., transportation and part feeding), moving toward assistance (e.g., (pre)assembly and machine tending), and in the future more service-minded tasks (e.g., maintenance and cleaning). Based on the identified realworld applications, it is possible to raise the AIMM technology to the next levels of industrial maturation, integration, and commercialization.

The purpose of this paper is to present experience from a real-world demonstration of autonomous industrial mobile manipulation (AIMM) based on the mobile manipulator "Little Helper" performing multiple part feeding at the pump manufacturer Grundfos A/S. Design/methodology/approach-The different AIMM technologies exist at a mature level-the reason that no mobile manipulators have yet been implemented in industrial environments, is that research in the right applications have not been carried out. We propose a pragmatic approach consisting of: a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) mobile manipulator system design ("Little Helper"), a suitable and comprehensive industrial application (multiple part feeding), and a general implementation concept for industrial environments (the "Bartender Concept"). Findings-Results from the three days of real-world demonstration show that "Little Helper" is capable of successfully servicing four part feeders in three production cells using command signals from an Open Process Control (OPC) server. Furthermore, the paper presents future research and development suggestions for AIMM, which contributes to near-term industrial maturation and implementation. Originality/value-The paper presents a full-scale demonstration of a state-of-the-art COTS autonomous mobile manipulator system with particular focus on industrial utilization and application.