Design and Testing of a Modular Autonomous Delivery Robot for Healthcare and Industrial Service

Abstract

The increased need for inexpensive intelligent robotic systems with autonomous capabilities in structured environments such as hospitals and warehouses has led to many innovations in the field of service robotics. This paper describes the design, development, and testing of a modular robot for autonomous delivery tasks featuring a four-wheeled differential drive chassis and ATmega328P microcontroller. The robot utilizes a combination of line-following using infrared sensors, object detection by ultrasonic sensors, smartphone Bluetooth control, and remote infrared controls on the same cost-effective platform. The robot has been successfully tested both in hardware and in Gazebo–ROS simulation, demonstrating the ability to track the defined path and detect and evade objects in a structured indoor environment. While the present version of the robot does not incorporate localization and SLAM capability, the modular chassis structure with three layers enables easy incorporation of LiDAR, IMU sensor, and wheel encoder to provide full autonomy in future versions of the robot.