Development towards autonomous navigation and automatic handling of palletized freight units by an autonomous vehicle with forks

In the mobile robots community, particular interest in research in autonomous vehicles has been carried out extensively since the last decade. However, the role of mobile robots capable of delivering freight for the last-mile delivery solution is still under study. Freight Urban Robotic vehicle; FURBOT is one such vehicle that is being developed continuously for the last-mile delivery solution. The difference in this vehicle is the capability to load the freight into itself without physical human intervention. Currently, the vehicle is a complete drive-by-wire vehicle, and studies are being conducted to introduce autonomous capabilities in the vehicle. This thesis is an attempt forward in that direction. Three different aspects of the vehicle, which include; autonomous navigation, autonomous freight handling capabilities, and technical management associated with this upgrading, are studied in this thesis. A mathematical model for the vehicle was built for autonomous navigation, which did not exist beforehand for the vehicle. After developing the model, obstacle avoidance techniques were created, and the controller was verified for the proposed methods. The highlight of the thesis involves enhancing the capabilities of an already built freight handling structure. This involves upgrading the pre-existing pallet handling robot, parking pose generation for autonomous freight handling and the design of the approach to the specific parking pose. To complete the vehicle’s journey from a drive-by-wire to an autonomous vehicle, in-depth analysis is performed, incorporating studies for the vehicle’s amalgamation in the urban environment. Additionally, handover strategies are also studied in case of the vehicle fails during its autonomous drive. The outcome of this research produced multiple enhancements for the vehicle, including independent parking pose generation, correct categorization of the vehicle, software and hardware requirements, conservation of energy in pallet handling robot, and designing digital twin for the vehicle. Extensive simulation-based validations are carried out for the proposed research, which produced desirable results for the vehicle and thus has created a baseline for the way forward for converting the vehicle into a complete autonomous one.