KUKA youBot - a mobile manipulator for research and education

Establishing mobile manipulation as a powerful key technology for the cognitive factory requires mobile manipulation platforms, which at the same time pay attention to industrial requirements, meet requirements of education and research and last, but not least, come with a decent price tag. KUKA has recently launched a major research and development effort towards designing a mobile manipulation platform that meets these requirements and can serve as a reference platform for industry, research and education at the same time. Although the initiative has just left the starting blocks, a first off-spring, the KUKA youBot, an omni-directional mobile manipulator has just seen the light of day. In this paper we report on the development of the first prototypes.