https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/fxpcP49ojt4qBB2WJwL1cA Translated from Chinese
From indoor to outdoor scene, can the robot chassis get through the last mile?
Remember the robot that dug holes and planted trees in the Alashan Desert in the Robot Desert Control Project of East China Normal University?
In the endless Alashan desert no man’s land, under the scorching sun, a half-person-high robot with a large spiral drill bit, driven by photovoltaic solar energy , can drill a depth of four, The fifty-centimeter pit speeds up people's desert control process.
Not only that, based on the characteristics of outdoor sports performance, outdoor application scenarios such as park inspection and disinfection, logistics transportation, agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry, industrial intelligent manufacturing, and geological exploration have also seen more and more such UGV robots.
This is a very big progress. Robots can go from indoors to outdoors, which seems to be a short distance, but it means that robots need to face a more complex environment. Different road surfaces, slopes and complex road conditions restrict the development of outdoor robots. At the same time, robots are required to have more powerful communication capabilities, environmental adaptability and perception capabilities. The problem of the last mile has been plagued by robotics companies for a long time. Why are more and more robots now able to go outdoors?
Chassis New Market
Different from the development route of AGV and AMR in indoor industrial scenes, UGV robots can continue to develop in more outdoor-like industrial-grade applications, and continue to realize the development of more scenes, first of all thanks to the development of robot chassis. As the basic module for robots to move, the robot chassis undoubtedly plays a vital role in the extension of similar outdoor scenes. It can be said that the foundation of successful industry applications is inseparable from an excellent mobile bearer platform.
However, if companies in various industries design and develop chassis independently, they often face the problems of long cycle and high cost. Therefore, relatively common robot chassis have always existed in the market. In recent years, companies such as Canada's ClearPath have also emerged in this field. The company was once considered to be one of the largest and most well-funded startups in the service robot field.
There are also such companies in China that focus on the manufacture of robot chassis. The above-mentioned application in the Alashan Desert is the product of Songling Robot, the world's leading outdoor chassis manufacturer.
(Songling Robot Product System)
Many people in this company are no strangers to the company. Wei Jidong, the co-founder of Songling Robot, has served as DJI Innovation and R&D Manager, and is also the No. 1 employee and co-founder of Robomaster in DJI National Robot Competition. The other founding members of Songling Robot are from ROBOCON (Asia Pacific Robot Competition) and they are all senior R&D product managers.
The well-known product of Songling Robot is the all-round chassis product SCOUT, which was launched in 2018. The good off-road performance of this product can make the robot have the ability to adapt to complex environments, and because of its strong versatility and Open source, it sold out quickly after it started shipping in November 2018, and was subsequently praised by many school and laboratory users. Many schools and laboratories began to explore the outdoor work of robots with this universal chassis. The SCOUT2.0 released by the company in March this year is more because it can support the current mainstream communication modules, and has attracted widespread attention from many industry companies. Some commentators believe that Songling Robot may become ClearPath's number one competitor.
Today, Songling Robotics has once again released HUNTER 2.0, a new product of mature industrialized chassis, hoping to continue to lead the development trend of robot chassis. Where is the secret that they can continue to innovate? What innovations are worth looking forward to for new products? In this article, the Robot Lecture Hall will analyze the product parameters of HUNTER 2.0 and reveal the secrets of Songling Robot product innovation.
(Hunter2.0 vehicle)
Obvious advantages in structural design
From the products of Songling Robot, we can see that no matter from SCOUT 1.0 to 2.0, the advantages of structural design are very prominent. Its products are different from the shape of the traditional chassis. Songling Robot calls it the concept of full coverage applicable environment. And most of the reasons for its attention and praise are this.
The appearance of Songling robot products is very similar to that of automobiles. Under the newly upgraded heat dissipation and safety system, the structural design of the robot chassis has been reshaped, and the product structure also adopts a mature car-like structure. This means that the robot can improve the adaptability of the car body to the terrain while ensuring the power. For example, it can complete obstacles up to 10cm, ensure the usability of multiple outdoor scenes, and expand the indoor scene again with a more compact and compact design. , Independent suspension can adapt to various rugged paths, zero turning radius can easily control narrow environments. Based on the unique technical advantages of Songling Robot in off-road performance, Songling Robot's products continue to obtain customer orders from patrol security, construction industry, agriculture, logistics and other fields.
In the latest release of HUNTER 2.0, this new product continues Songling Robot’s consistent environmental application concept and adopts the chassis of Ackerman steering design, which makes the robot have features similar to cars. This independent front wheel steering and The swing arm suspension design allows the robot to pass through speed bumps without obstacles, while reducing tire wear, which means that the robot has the ability to work with high intensity for a long time in environments such as roads. Unlike most manufacturers' UGV robots, this design makes it suitable for working on ordinary cement and asphalt roads and has obvious advantages, which greatly expands the robot's scene development capabilities.
Power and speed coexist
The appearance design is the detail that today's technology companies pay great attention to. The HUNTER series continues the simple and generous shape of the Songling robot. The new HUNTER 2.0 adopts a steel body to make the appearance more cool.
The fuselage is equipped with a 400W dual servo motor drive. In order to ensure the movement and load capacity, each wheel uses an independent brushless servo motor and uses a swing arm suspension, which greatly improves the adaptability of the vehicle body to the terrain while achieving power. At the same time, the stability of the load and the anti-interference ability are ensured, so that the load is as high as 150KG, and the indoor and outdoor switching and unimpeded operation.
(Exploded diagram of hunter2.0 vehicle drive)
In the power system, the HUNTER 2.0 battery uses the same lithium iron phosphate solution as Tesla’s new Model 3. This new type of battery has a cheaper combination of raw materials. At the same time, HUNTER 2.0 uses a portable battery design to provide alternatives With two capacities, users can customize battery packs with different capacities according to task needs, and flexibly plug in and out switch configuration as needed.
(Removable battery for hunter2)
Like the current mainstream configuration of electric vehicles, HUNTER 2.0 also adopts a battery BMS system, which eliminates the need to use traditional wiring harnesses, saves up to 90% of the wiring harness and up to 15% of the battery pack volume, improves design flexibility and Manufacturability, without affecting the mileage and accuracy of the battery's service life, ensures that the robot is safe and worry-free during operation. It is understood that the current HUNTER 2.0 has a cruising range of up to 40KM.
Thanks to the well-designed drive system and battery configuration, HUNTER 2.0 adds a ramp parking function. This electromagnetic parking function supports the vehicle's ramp parking with power loss. By locking the tires, the robot can achieve long ramps. parking. This also means that if the vehicle is powered off or malfunctions during driving on a sloped road, the robot will not have a slope problem, which further guarantees stable and reliable work safety.
(Slope parking for hunter2)
In order to meet the application requirements of different autonomous driving scenarios and fully escort the application of industrial-grade robots, the new HUNTER 2.0 product also supports customized speed upgrades up to 10KM/H. These are personalized and unique configuration solutions similar to current electric vehicles. People can't help but think that this is a new force that makes cars.
Rapid secondary development
But different from the drive and battery details of similar vehicles, the multi-load expansion and rapid secondary development capabilities make people once again aware of the unique business logic of Songling Robot, the world's leading outdoor chassis manufacturer.
In previous reports, Wei Jidong, the founder of Songling Robotics, mentioned that unlike the traditional chassis products in the industry, Songling Robotics has clear design ideas and expansion directions from development to market positioning. Choose to focus more on other core modules and applications of the robot, hoping to help companies that have a demand for robots in a more open form to reduce the development cycle and cost of the chassis. Therefore, in the iterative process of the product, openness and ease Usability is a factor that Songling Robot attaches great importance to.
The new HUNTER2.0 product embodies this ease of use and open new features. Not only can a variety of advanced operation modes (remote driving/automatic driving) be customized on HUNTER2.0, users can also directly communicate with the master through the CAN bus protocol Communication, while providing open source SDK, ROS_PACKAGE, this structural solution is currently adapted to the most diverse automatic driving solutions.
In the previous Huawei Honor V30 conference held at the Beijing University of Technology Olympic Stadium, Song Ling Robot also joined Huawei to demonstrate the remote driving solution: SCOUT, which is far away in Shanghai, smoothly climbs and descends under the remote control of Beijing Honor V30. Turning, showing excellent off-road performance, and also reflects the high controllability and stability of the robot chassis in the 5G transmission environment for remote automatic driving.
(Use Huawei to operate the robot)
At the same time, standard profile channels are reserved around the body of the new HUNTER 2.0 product to quickly build top loads (sensing, industrial control, IMU, routing, cameras, etc.), support custom design of aluminum sensor brackets, and support more advanced automatic driving System access (such as ROS, Apollo, etc.) supports the completion of customer customization and in-depth secondary development, ensuring the robot's high flexibility and flexible operation capabilities, which also means that users only need to understand software development and basic hardware knowledge. , Given the instructions required by the equipment, it can be quickly put into application without considering the hardware development of the chassis itself. This undoubtedly saves users time, improves efficiency and reduces costs. It is widely used in inspection, detection, transportation, and teaching. Waiting scenes provide more possibilities.
(HUNTER 2.0 can support secondary development)
Regardless of the load capacity, moving speed or power of the product, it can be extended externally. It provides standardized protocols and interfaces to facilitate rapid secondary development, making this product more like a general integrated consumer product, and at the same time Being able to continuously use the open overlay function, this 1+N model may also become an important reason why Songling Robot can attract countless fans.
Conclusion
Going out of the room, going to fields, factories, tunnels, disaster sites and other harsh and harmful operating environments will inevitably become an important direction for the development of intelligent robots in the future. The majority of robot manufacturing companies and integrated companies must use this method to move from indoor industrial scenes to outdoors An all-round universal chassis improves flexibility.
For example, currently used in surveillance inspections, robots equipped with remote image transmission and capable of surmounting various slope obstacles can be used for field inspections;
In terms of logistics and transportation, the powerful maneuverability can enter narrow doors and elevators, which can be used for factory transportation where indoor and outdoor scenes are switched;
In industrial applications, industrial equipment such as robotic arms can also be assembled to complete the expansion of outdoor industrial automation scenarios;
In detection and exploration, equipped with remote remote control equipment such as image transmission, can work in dangerous and harmful environments such as tunnels, construction sites, and disaster sites;
In the agriculture, animal husbandry and forestry industries, it is equipped with sprinkler irrigation, picking, sampling, hopper and other equipment, which can also be compatible with pastures, farmland and other soil, grass and mud environments;
In teaching simulation, it has modular design and open software, and also supports autonomous driving education development and vehicle simulation scenarios.
It is foreseeable that the exploration of the commercialization path of the robot chassis + expansion service will undoubtedly be promising in the future, whether on the C side or the B side.
Finally, I attach a detailed parameter map of the new product. I hope that this good robot chassis can help more users' products get through the last mile, go out of the room, and move toward the broader blue ocean market of outdoor applications.
END
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