The small Omnidirectional measurement robot is not much larger than a Euro container. Nevertheless, like its bigger brother OmniMan, it is equipped with an Omnidirectional Mecanum drive. Thanks to several data and power ports on the top, the small robot can be quickly and easily expanded with sensors.
Even without additional sensors, the small robot is already equipped with safety laser scanners that can also be used for localization. Positioned at two corners, the two 270° scanners together cover the full 360°.
A permanently installed industrial PC controls the four motors of the Mecanum wheels via a CAN bus. The robot software developed at IMSL is used for this purpose on a real-time Linux system. This enables the use of ROS packages.
The robot was developed as part of a ZIM project in collaboration with the company imetron, based in Umkirch near Freiburg. Under the DONKEYmotion brand, imetron went on to develop a whole range of products based on small and large Mecanum platforms following the project.