Study on controlling three-dimensional plugin-docking motion with the active-caster omnidirectional robot

Abstract

This paper presents a new battery recharging method called “Plugin-docking system” to solve the recharging problem for mobile robot. The proposed system includes a camera and charging plug set on the height control system that installed in the Omni-directional robot with three Active-casters. The captured image by the camera is disposed the binarization process by using the threshold values setting method in order to detect the wall outlet position. According to the calculated outlet position from this process, the three-dimensional plugin-docking into the outlet is conducting by using the Omni-directional mobile robot movements. The advanced feature of this proposed system is that achieved the detecting and plugging into a standard outlet with no marker, so on, in millimeter-scale precision only by the robot movement, without using a robot arm or an exclusive docking station. From the experiment results using a prototype, it is confirmed that the proposed Plugin-docking system has high success rate 100% and expected reliability.