Hardware in the Loop Topology for an Omnidirectional Mobile Robot Using Matlab in a Robot Operating System Environment

The symmetry of the omnidirectional robot motion abilities around its central vertical axis is an important advantage regarding its driveability for the flexible interoperation with fixed conveyor systems. The paper illustrates a Hardware in the Loop architectural approach for integrated development of an Ominidirectional Mobile Robot that is designed to serve in a dynamic logistic environment. Such logistic environments require complex algorithms for autonomous navigation between different warehouse locations, that can be efficiently developed using Robot Operating System nodes. Implementing path planning nodes benefits from using Matlab-Simulink, which provides a large selection of algorithms that are easily integrated and customized. The proposed solution is deployed for validation on a NVIDIA Jetson Nano, the embedded computer hosted locally on the robot, that runs the autonomous navigation software. The proposed solution permits the live connection to the omnidirectional prototype platform, allowing to deploy algorithms and acquire data for debugging the location, path planning and the mapping information during real time autonomous navigation experiments, very useful in validating different strategies.