Submitted Abstract
Mobile robots such as service robots, highly automated cars or drones are expected to be-come a huge market in the coming years. In contrast to the stationary and automatic robot arms, mobile service robots and drones will be able to move (or fly) in an unstructured envi-ronment, perform complex tasks with a higher degree of autonomy and also in close interaction with human users. Therefore, they must be able to sense the environment with advanced sen-sors, to process the sensor data and extract information, to use knowledge and world models in order to plan and make decisions and finally to act in the environment with advanced actua-tors. While considerable progress has been made in recent years in single areas such as e.g. mechatronics, sensors, control, computer vision or artificial intelligence, a still remaining prob-lem is the efficient overall and systematic design and engineering of autonomous mobile robots in order to transfer the research results into innovative, safe and reliable but also cost-efficient mobile robotic products. Therefore, the main objective of the planned project is the definition of a concept for a novel overall engineering design process for mobile robots with a high degree of autonomy. Based on the current state-of-the-art and own previous work, this process should comprise the deriva-tion of suitable design process models and functional structures that take the special functions and requirements of autonomous robots into account. Herein, a main focus will be on the ICT and software part and, more specifically, on model-based design and Domain Specific Lan-guages. Furthermore, it will be investigated how design and further improvement of functionalities via machine learning during the application of the mobile robot can be combined in a sys-tematic way in the approach. The proposed project comprises the research planned within the 6 months sabbatical of the PI, Prof. Holger Voos, head of the SnT Automation and Robotics Research Group, conducted in close collaboration with the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and the SUTD-MIT International Design Centre (IDC). The IDC, established in collaboration with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will offer the unique opportunity to work with world-leading experts in the area of engineering design. Within the overall project Prof. Voos will spent a period of 3 months in Singapore which is planned to be financially supported by this FNR grant.