Abstract
Virtual and physical rapid prototyping of mobile robots is often necessary not only in the development of research platforms, but also for validating commercial and customized mobile robot applications. The design of a robot involves specialized knowledge from mechanical, electrical and software engineering. Despite summarizing the wide variety of tools and knowledge is a challenging task, this chapter presents the main guidelines and recommendations for the design and rapid prototyping of mobile robots. The chapter reviews basic design rules, the fundamental robot components, the general hardware and software architecture. The discussion includes aspects that are key to the selection of those components that ensure the robot prototype meets the motion specifications, such as the selection of computing platforms, the main types of mechanical transmissions, efficiency issues, the role of bearings and other aspects concerning stability, overturning margins, controllability and the motion dynamics. Finally, all the concepts and guidelines are employed in the design of a skid-steer mobile robot, which is presented as an example of rapid mobile robot prototyping. A summary of the main conclusions and suggestions for further reading is presented in the last section.
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