How Do Laser Navigation Mobile Robots Work?

Compared with the traditional magnetic stripe navigation and QR code navigation mobile robots, laser navigation mobile robots are increasingly favored by users for their autonomous and flexible advantages, and are widely used in various industries such as industrial manufacturing, electronics manufacturing, e-commerce warehousing, medical education, food and tobacco, and security inspection.

For magnetic stripe navigation and QR code navigation mobile robots, you can intuitively see the magnetic stripes and QR codes on the ground, to know that the mobile robot is positioned and navigated according to the magnetic stripes and QR codes, and travels according to the established route. However, for laser navigation mobile robots, there are no auxiliary positioning facilities such as magnetic strips and QR codes on the ground. 

So how does a laser-navigated mobile robot work? There are two ways of laser navigation, laser reflector navigation and laser natural contour navigation.

How Does Laser Reflector Navigation Work

Laser reflector navigation is achieved by continuous emission of laser pulses from the LIDAR, which is emitted at certain angular intervals by a rotating optical mechanism to form a two-dimensional scanning surface based on radial coordinates. The LIDAR identifies the position of the laser reflector by recognizing the reflectivity of the object surface within the scanning range and then calculates the position and attitude information of the AGV where the LIDAR is located by the position of at least three reflectors.

The laser reflector has an internal trigonal structure, which can realize the same reflection of the incident light, and the reflectivity is far greater than the reflectivity of the ordinary object surface, so the LIDAR can easily identify the reflector.

How Does Laser Natural Contour Navigation Work

Laser natural contour navigation is based on the navigation principle of SLAM. SLAM is synchronous positioning and mapping, which means that in an unknown environment, the robot uses its own internal sensors (encoders, IMUs, etc.) and external sensors (laser sensors or vision sensors) to position itself, and uses the environmental information acquired by the external sensors to incrementally build a map of the environment based on the localization.

In the process of map construction, In map construction process, the laser sensor detects and learns the contours of objects in the surrounding natural environment (such as walls, columns or other fixed objects), including information such as distance, angle, and reflectivity of the measured object, and then realizes the positioning and navigation of the mobile robot through SLAM algorithms.

Since the laser is not limited by light and has strong anti-interference, the data obtained by laser detection has the characteristics of high precision, strong real-time performance, and stable data, and the LIDAR is easy to install, which is very suitable for mobile robot navigation.

Compared with the traditional magnetic stripe navigation, two-dimensional code navigation and laser reflector navigation, the laser natural contour navigation method has high flexibility, and strong stability, and is less affected by external interference factors. On the other hand, there is no need to lay auxiliary positioning facilities such as magnetic strips, two-dimensional codes, and reflective columns, and no need to modify the user's on-site workshop environment. It has obvious advantages in early implementation and low maintenance costs.

About Youibot

Youibot Robotics covers 26 provinces (municipalities and autonomous regions) in China market, and exports to Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Spain, Germany, Italy and other countries. It has accumulated rich experience in intelligent logistics in vertical fields such as power plant inspection, vehicle maintenance, automobile and semi-conductor industry intelligence manufacturing, become a partner of many well-known domestic and foreign brands. For any more information about mobile robots, please do not hesitate to contact us.