Implementation of an Autonomous Tool Trolley in a Production Line

摘要

In recent years, the rising demand for customised products has changed the requirements for industrial production. Nonetheless human workers are still an important part of the production process, especially in the area of final assembly. In the production of small series as well as customer-configured products, tools for different work tasks are used on different workstations at various instances of time. This paper documents the development of an autonomous tool trolley (ATT), which makes the production equipment effortless available directly at the required location. The implemented control system is based on the Robot Operating System (ROS) and provides autonomous navigation functionalities. An experiment compares different sensor concepts used for localisation. The experiments are performed in the unstructured environment of an industrial production line. The best preforming sensor setup is used for the task of autonomous navigation. A final experiment proves that the positioning accuracy of the developed ATT is suitable for the tool delivery task.