Wheeled autonomous following robot

Abstract

The utility model provides a wheeled autonomous following robot, which relates to the technical field of mobile robots and comprises a chassis system and a control system. The chassis system is used for installing a power mechanism and all parts, and normal driving is guaranteed. The control system comprises a control module and an environment sensing module, and an upper computer in the control module receives sensor data of the environment sensing module, calculates the data, makes a corresponding control decision, sends a control instruction to a lower computer and controls the hub motor to complete the corresponding decision. The environment sensing module comprises a depth vision camera, a UWB module and a multi-line laser radar; the depth vision camera is responsible for identifying and tracking a target; the multi-line laser radar is responsible for scanning and extracting obstacle information; and the UWB module is responsible for continuously acquiring target information after the camera loses the following target so as to achieve the purpose of continuously executing the following task.

Description

Technical Field

[0001] The utility model relates to the technical field of mobile robots, in particular to a wheeled autonomous following robot. Background Art

[0002] Most current following robots rely primarily on vision technology, which is ineffective at acquiring target information. If the camera loses sight of the target, they become unable to continue following. Furthermore, existing following robots generally have relatively simple application scenarios, lack autonomous path planning to locate the target, and have poor chassis maneuverability, making them difficult to meet user needs in practical applications.

[0003] Therefore, providing a wheeled robot that can autonomously plan paths, autonomously avoid obstacles, accurately obtain target information, and autonomously follow the target after losing the target is an urgent problem to be solved by technical personnel in this field, and it is of great significance to the development and promotion of the application field of robots. Utility Model Content

[0004] In response to the shortcomings of existing technologies, this utility model provides a wheeled autonomous following robot. This utility model solves the problems that current following robots rely mainly on visual technology, which is not effective in acquiring target information, and cannot continue to complete the following task if the camera loses the target to follow; the application scenarios are generally relatively simple, and the robot cannot autonomously plan a path to find the target to follow; the chassis has poor passability, which makes it difficult to meet user needs in actual applications.

[0005] The technical solutions provided by this utility model are as follows:

[0006] A wheeled autonomous following robot, comprising a chassis system and a control system;

[0007] The chassis system specifically includes a body module, a power module, a powertrain, a suspension module and a protection module;

[0008] The vehicle body module consists of four wheels and a vehicle body frame; the wheels use off-road tires with a diameter of 300 mm;

[0009] The power module is composed of several lithium batteries connected in series and installed inside the vehicle body frame; the output end of the power module is connected to the control system and the powertrain;

[0010] The powertrain uses four 500W hub motors, the output ends of which are connected to four wheels respectively. The total power of the hub motors connected in series is P=2kW. The autonomous following robot adopts four-wheel differential drive.

[0011] The suspension module adopts an upper and lower double wishbone independent suspension system, which consists of an upper wishbone, a connector, a shock absorber and a lower wishbone; the lower end of the shock absorber is connected to the lower wishbone, and the upper end of the shock absorber is connected to the vehicle body frame; the upper wishbone and the lower wishbone are connected by a connector, and the center of the connector is connected to the wheel hub, and the wheel is driven by the hub motor;

[0012] The protection module is two detachable anti-collision beams installed in front and behind the vehicle body frame;

[0013] The control system specifically includes a control module and an environment perception module;

[0014] The control module includes a host computer and a slave computer. The host computer adopts the Jetson Xavier NX development board and is installed above the vehicle body frame; the slave computer adopts the STM32 single-chip microcomputer and is installed inside the vehicle body frame.

[0015] The upper computer and the lower computer use USB to transmit data. The upper computer receives sensor data from the environment perception module, makes corresponding control decisions based on the data, and then sends control instructions to the lower computer. The lower computer controls the wheel hub motor to complete the corresponding decision function.

[0016] The environment perception module is installed above the vehicle body frame and specifically includes a depth vision camera, a UWB module and a multi-line laser radar; the multi-line laser radar is located behind the depth vision camera and is set on a bracket to form a height difference with the depth vision camera;

[0017] The UWB module consists of two base stations and a tag. The base stations are installed on both sides of the depth vision camera; the tag is carried by the tracking target.

[0018] The beneficial effects of adopting the above technical solution are:

[0019] This utility model provides a wheeled autonomous following robot. Compared to existing technologies, this one utilizes a fusion of vision and UWB modules to address the problems of current following robots, which primarily rely on vision technology, poorly acquiring target information, and unable to continue following tasks if the camera loses the target. Furthermore, this utility model addresses the problems of current following robots, such as the generally simple application scenarios and inability to autonomously plan paths to find the target; and the poor chassis maneuverability, which makes it difficult to meet user needs in practical applications.

[0020] The present invention also provides a control method for a wheeled autonomous following robot, which is based on the above-mentioned wheeled autonomous following robot and solves the same technical problem. The control method of the present invention has good portability and can meet different hardware configurations and different task requirements. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0021] Figure 1 The present invention provides a schematic diagram of the overall structure of a wheeled autonomous following robot.

[0022] Figure 2 A schematic diagram of a chassis system of a wheeled autonomous following robot is provided for an embodiment of the present utility model;

[0023] Figure 3 A flowchart of a wheeled autonomous following robot performing a following task is provided for an embodiment of the utility model;

[0024] In the figure, 1-chassis system, 2-control system, 11-body module, 111-off-road tire, 112-body frame, 12-power module, 13-powertrain, 14-suspension module, 15-protection module, 141-upper cross arm, 142-connector, 143-shock absorber, 144-lower cross arm, 21-upper computer, 22-lower computer, 23-depth vision camera, 241-base station 1, 242-base station 2, 25-multi-line lidar. DETAILED DESCRIPTION

[0025] The following embodiments are used to illustrate the present invention, but are not intended to limit the scope of the present invention.

[0026] A wheeled autonomous following robot, such as Figure 1 、 Figure 2 As shown, it includes a chassis system 1 and a control system 2;

[0027] The chassis system 1 is as follows Figure 1 As shown, it specifically includes a body module 11, a power module 12, a power assembly 13, a suspension module 14 and a protection module 15;

[0028] The vehicle body module 11 is composed of four wheels and a vehicle body frame. The wheels use off-road tires with a diameter of 300 mm. The off-road tires 111 can effectively improve the climbing and off-road capabilities of the chassis system, ensuring good contact between the tires and the ground, allowing the following robot to maintain good adhesion, thereby ensuring sufficient driving force to achieve following functions such as forward, backward, and steering.

[0029] The power module 12 is composed of several 48V lithium batteries connected in series and installed inside the vehicle body frame; the output end of the power module is connected to the control system and the powertrain;

[0030] The powertrain 13 uses four 500W hub motors, the output ends of which are connected to four wheels respectively. The total power of the hub motors connected in series is P=2kW. The autonomous following robot adopts a four-wheel differential drive, which can realize the function of turning in place.

[0031] The suspension module 14 adopts an upper and lower double wishbone independent suspension system, such as Figure 2 As shown, it consists of an upper cross arm 141, a connector 142, a shock absorber 143 and a lower cross arm 144; the lower end of the shock absorber 143 is connected to the lower cross arm 144, and the upper end of the shock absorber 143 is connected to the vehicle body frame 112, so that it is not subjected to lateral forces, has good cornering stability, small roll, and a simple structure; the upper cross arm 141 and the lower cross arm 144 are connected by a connector 142, the center of the connector is connected to the wheel hub, and the wheel is driven by the hub motor; the independent suspension makes the autonomous following robot chassis have a good shock absorption effect;

[0032] The protection module 15 is two detachable anti-collision beams installed in front and behind the vehicle body frame; it ensures that the autonomous following robot still has a safety anti-collision function when the system fails, and ensures that the internal components of the robot are intact.

[0033] The function of the chassis system is to support and install the robot's power mechanism and various component assemblies to form the overall shape of the robot, and to receive driving force to make the robot move and ensure normal driving;

[0034] The control system 2 specifically includes a control module and an environment perception module;

[0035] The control module includes a host computer 21 and a slave computer 22. The host computer uses a Jetson Xavier NX development board and is installed above the vehicle body frame; the slave computer uses an STM32 microcontroller and is installed inside the vehicle body frame. The slave computer is responsible for communicating with the host computer, obtaining corresponding decision instructions, converting the instructions into PWM square wave signals and sending them to the motor controller to complete motion control.

[0036] The upper computer and the lower computer use USB to transmit data. The upper computer receives sensor data from the environment perception module, makes corresponding control decisions based on the data, and then sends control instructions to the lower computer. The lower computer controls the wheel hub motor to complete the corresponding decision function.

[0037] The environmental perception module is responsible for extracting target information and obstacle information;

[0038] The environment perception module is installed above the vehicle body frame and specifically includes a depth vision camera 23, a UWB module, and a multi-line laser radar 25. The multi-line laser radar is located behind the depth vision camera, and the environment perception module sends the extracted information data to the host computer. To avoid scanning the depth vision camera in front, the multi-line laser radar is set on a bracket to form a height difference with the depth vision camera.

[0039] The UWB module consists of a base station 1 241, a base station 242 and a tag. The two base stations are installed on both sides of the depth vision camera. The tag is carried by the tracking target. The UWB module is used to obtain the target position information. In this embodiment, the UWB module adopts UWB-X2-AOA.

[0040] On the other hand, a control method of a wheeled autonomous following robot is implemented by the aforementioned wheeled autonomous following robot, such as Figure 3 As shown, the specific steps include:

[0041] Step S1, obtaining position information of a following target and a wheeled autonomous following robot;

[0042] Step S2: Based on the position information of the target and the wheeled autonomous following robot, a global path planning is performed using the ROS function package to plan a smooth path that can reach the target within a set following distance, and the robot follows this path to the target within a set following distance. The following distance can be set manually. The global path planning in this embodiment is implemented using the D* algorithm provided by the ROS function package.

[0043] Step S3: After reaching the vicinity of the target, the target starts to move, and the following robot uses the SiamRPN visual tracking algorithm to track the target and control the wheeled following robot to follow the target; the SiamRPN visual tracking algorithm can be directly implemented in the PyTorch deep learning framework;

[0044] If the target of the visual tracking algorithm is lost during the following process, proceed to S4; if the target is not lost, proceed directly to S6;

[0045] During the following process, a multi-line laser radar is used to detect obstacles. If an obstacle appears, S5 is performed; if no obstacle appears, S6 is performed.

[0046] Step S4: Use the UWB module to obtain the distance and angle information of the target, ensure that the control module obtains the target's position information in real time, ensure that the visual camera still maintains accurate positioning and tracking after losing the target, and control the wheeled autonomous following robot to continue following the target;

[0047] Step S5: Obstacle detection is performed using a multi-line laser radar. After an obstacle is detected, local path planning is performed using the ROS function package to achieve obstacle avoidance. The local path planning in this embodiment is implemented using the DWA algorithm provided by the ROS function package.

[0048] The obstacle detection is directly implemented by the Leishen Intelligent C16 multi-line laser radar.

[0049] Step S6: Continue to follow the target until the target reaches the end point and the mission is completed.

[0050] The above description is merely a preferred embodiment of the present disclosure and an illustration of the technical principles employed. Those skilled in the art should understand that the scope of the utility model disclosed herein is not limited to the technical solutions formed by a specific combination of the above-mentioned technical features, but should also encompass other technical solutions formed by any combination of the above-mentioned technical features or their equivalents without departing from the concept of the utility model. For example, the above-mentioned features may be replaced with (but not limited to) technical features with similar functions disclosed in the embodiments of the present disclosure.

Claims

1. A wheeled autonomous following robot, characterized in that: Including chassis system and control system; The chassis system specifically includes a body module, a power module, a powertrain, a suspension module and a protection module; The vehicle body module consists of four wheels and a vehicle body frame; the power module is composed of several lithium batteries connected in series and installed inside the vehicle body frame; the output end of the power module is connected to the control system and the powertrain; the powertrain uses four 500W hub motors, the output ends of the four hub motors are connected to the four wheels respectively, and the total power of the hub motors in series is P = 2kW; the autonomous following robot adopts a four-wheel differential drive; the suspension module adopts an upper and lower double wishbone independent suspension system; the protection module is two detachable anti-collision beams installed on the front and rear of the vehicle body frame; The control system specifically includes a control module and an environmental perception module; the control module includes a host computer and a slave computer, the host computer adopts a Jetson Xavier NX development board and is installed above the vehicle body frame; the slave computer adopts an STM32 single-chip microcomputer and is installed inside the vehicle body frame; the environmental perception module is installed above the vehicle body frame.

2. A wheeled autonomous following robot according to claim 1, characterized in that: The wheels use off-road tires with a diameter of 300 mm.

3. The wheeled autonomous following robot according to claim 1, characterized in that: The suspension module consists of an upper cross arm, a connector, a shock absorber and a lower cross arm; the lower end of the shock absorber is connected to the lower cross arm, the upper end of the shock absorber is connected to the body frame, the upper cross arm and the lower cross arm are connected through a connector, the center of the connector is connected to the wheel hub, and the wheel is driven by the hub motor.

4. The wheeled autonomous following robot according to claim 1, characterized in that: The upper computer and the lower computer use USB to transmit data. The upper computer receives sensor data from the environment perception module, makes corresponding control decisions based on the data, and then sends control instructions to the lower computer. The lower computer controls the wheel hub motor to complete the corresponding decision function.

5. The wheeled autonomous following robot according to claim 1, characterized in that: The environmental perception module specifically includes a depth vision camera, a UWB module and a multi-line laser radar; the multi-line laser radar is located behind the depth vision camera, and the multi-line laser radar is set on a bracket to form a height difference with the depth vision camera; The UWB module consists of two base stations and a tag. The base stations are installed on both sides of the depth vision camera; the tag is carried by the tracking target.

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