DEVELOPMENT OF MULTI-MOBILE ROBOT SYSTEMS FOR ROBOTICS CLASSROOM LEARNING
Wutthigrai Boonsuk · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023
Demand for multi-mobile robot systems has grown substantially for manufacturing production and supply chain logistics. Amazon warehouses, for example, have more than 200,000 mobile robots moving millions of different products for their picking and packing processes, since fast delivery has become Amazon’s key competitiveness against other retailers. Thus, having a workforce well-versed in the technology behind multiple mobile robot control systems is essential in many industries. While commercial systems are available on the market, multi-mobile robot control systems are too complex and costly for classroom learning. In this study, an ESP-SQL Bot system was developed specifically for classroom settings. This system was intended to be simple to construct and control at a reasonable cost. The system employed an SQL database server as a command center that stored a sequence of instructions for controlling robots. An ESP8266 module on each robot was used as a cost-effective microcontroller for retrieving instructions from the database server over a Wi-Fi network and utilized the instructions to operate the robot. A visualization tool, such as ROS Visualization or RViz, was used for tracking multiple mobile robots in a virtual space. The system developed in this study can be used to assist educators, including engineering-technology and technology instructors, in creating such a system for classroom teaching, while also allowing students to develop more complex control systems.