Benny

Benny is an autonomous robot for logistics, currently under development. We are planning to have a working technology demonstrator sometime in December 2018 and a working prototype around May 2019. The robot is using signal triangulation and OCR for indoor positioning and navigation, sensors for obstacles detection, motion detection and short term inertial navigation.

The management solution will handle a fleet of robots to optimize trajectories, predict possible collisions and coordinate the whole activity. The technology demonstrator will be the first step toward a commercial industrial robot.

March 2019 Update.

As planned, back in Nov 2018, we have a fully programable working prototype, capable to navigate a grid of visual markers using camera to determine the coordinates and orientation vector based on form recognition and move to destination within a precision of +/-1mm per 1m distance. Benny is using ultrasound sensor to determine the obstacles and avoid collisions.

Benny is voice recognition enabled and can receive several commands through this feature.

Benny also has a brother to play with, Bob! Benny and Bob will be able to work as a team and collaborate.

All the Benny series robots are communicating with the Absolute Robotics Server, which is used to give task to each individual robot or to a group of robots, team up more than two robots to act as one and to monitor and control the whole fleet.

Currently under development is the dead reckoning and inertial navigation functionality which will allow Benny to navigate even without visual markers and further add functionalities on the server side.

Benny 1.0 main characteristics:

• Size: 0.5 m x 0.5 m x 0.3 m
• Maximum Speed: 2 m/s
• Positioning Accuracy: 1 mm for 1m of movement
• Power: 12V DC
• Autonomy: 2-4 h. depending on the load
• Load capacity: 5 kg