Published on Sep 03, 2023
The project aims at making a robot that can be used as a material fetcher from a known storage. The model that we assume is a generic abstraction of several type of fetching purposes, nding application in re lling materials for an assembly line or in a library or a godown scenario.
The robot aims at meeting the requests made to it (which are dynamic in nature) in a matter which minimises the delay from the associated deadline.We use a FireBird V Robot and a central server for the scheduling and fetching purposes.
ARMS(Automated Retrieval of Material from Storage) is a system that aims to fetch materials from a storage based on minimizing the total delay caused due to the schedule.
There is a central server where in requests can be fed through a GUI, the requests are handled online and dynamic scheduling is performed to come up with a best schedule that minimises the total delay caused due to the schedule.
The bot has been mounted with bins (3 in this case), one for each type of object and an Arm assembly, whose purpose is to pick up objects and place them in the correct bin. The main purpose of the bot is to follow the instructions that have been given by the central server. There are 4 basic instructions, namely
1. Forward
2. Move Right
3. Move Left
4. Go to Garage On an intersection, in case the bot receieves the \Go to garage" command, it then goes to the garage (which is located towards the south-west counter with respect to the intersection).
Once in the garage, the bot then orients itself, so that it is ready to pick up the object from the garage and place it in the correct bin. Once done, the bot then returns to the intersection and is ready to recieve further instructions The bot moves around the Arena, while following the white lines, executing one instruction at a time and then sending the corresponding ack to the server once it has successfully executed the instruction. The instructions are sent to the bot using the XBee interface.
The arena simply comprises of
1. White lines, which are meant to guide the bot.
2. Intersections, meeting points of lines.
3. Garages, one corresponding to each intersection, located in the South- West direction with respect to the intersection.
The Central Server performs the function of scheduling all the tasks, while minimizing the overall delay (algorithm explained in the next section) that have been queued. Once the correct Schedule has been deciphered, the Server then sends to the bot, one instruction at a time, thus making it complete the task assigned. The central server also has an interface through which it han- dles online requests. It then modi es the running schedule, thus minimizing the delay including the newly entered task as well.
