A review of mobile robots: Concepts, methods, theoretical framework, and applications

Abstract

Humanoid robots, unmanned rovers, entertainment pets, drones, and so on are great examples of mobile robots. They can be distinguished from other robots by their ability to move autonomously, with enough intelligence to react and make decisions based on the perception they receive from the environment. Mobile robots must have some source of input data, some way of decoding that input, and a way of taking actions (including its own motion) to respond to a changing world. The need to sense and adapt to an unknown environment requires a powerful cognition system. Nowadays, there are mobile robots that can walk, run, jump, and so on like their biological counterparts. Several fields of robotics have arisen, such as wheeled mobile robots, legged robots, flying robots, robot vision, artificial intelligence, and so on, which involve different technological areas such as mechanics, electronics, and computer science. In this article, the world of mobile robots is explored including the new trends. These new trends are led by artificial intelligence, autonomous driving, network communication, cooperative work, nanorobotics, friendly human-robot interfaces, safe human-robot interaction, and emotion expression and perception. Furthermore, these news trends are applied to different fields such as medicine, health care, sports, ergonomics, industry, distribution of goods, and service robotics. These tendencies will keep going their evolution in the coming years.

A Novel Dynamic Three-Level Tracking Controller for Mobile Robots Considering Actuators and Power Stage Subsystems: Experimental Assessment

“…With the aim of working as a whole, the controls designed in items (1), (2), and (3) are interconnected by using the hierarchical controller concept [7-10].…”

A Robot with Decoupled Mechanical Structure and Adapted State Machine Control for Both Ground and Staircase Situations

“…For Equations (4) and 5, on the one hand, they are established without considering the time spent for the posture adjustment; on the other hand, in the practical design, both v y and v z depend on the EH power, and the power should be determined from the trade-off between the speed and the stability of stair-climbing. According to Equations (4) and (5), the relationship between n steps and the number of stair-climbing action cycles can be obtained, as shown in Table 5.…”

“…For solution of the last-mile problem of the express delivery, unattended home delivery can not only reduce the failure rate of the first delivery, but also save delivery time [3]. Currently, robots are gradually replacing humans in various aspects [4]. Therefore, the application of robots to realize unattended delivery is a labor-saving and time-saving solution.…”

A Distributed Vision-Based Navigation System for Khepera IV Mobile Robots

“…Robots that can navigate autonomously are complex systems involving several components that have a common denominator: communication capabilities and the speed of processing and operation. These capabilities are very important because an autonomous robot must have all the necessary information available to make the right decisions at every sampling time [ 10 , 11 ].…”