Mobile manipulators are useful in industries as they can go around carrying objects and deliver them to the respective work cells or stations as needed. This gives the robot liberty to reach almost all points in space, unlike a constrained robot arm's work volume. They are a very good addition to the flexible management systems that most industries follow for their plant automation. Apart from industries, they are useful in other fields, such as space exploration, mining, retail, and military applications. They could be either autonomously controlled, semi-autonomously controlled, or manually controlled based on the application's needs.
- For a good payload mobile robot base, we want the following:
- The robot may move on a flat or inclined flat surface but not an irregular surface.
- The robot may be a differential drive robot with fixed steering wheels and all wheels driven.
- The target payload of the mobile robot is 50 kg.
- For a robot arm, we want the following:
- The target payload of the robot arm is up to 5 kg.
- 5 degrees of freedom.