The market for automated guided vehicles (AGV) and autonomous mobile robots (AMR) is booming: the global market for mobile robotics, including service robotics, currently amounts to around 20.3 billion US dollars, and experts expect this figure to almost double by 2028. Mobile robots are particularly widespread in intralogistics and industrial applications. And these smart helpers are even increasingly making their rounds in the hospitality industry and hospitals. At Igus, too: the plastics experts have been successfully testing AGVs in-house for four years - driverless shelves that deliver mail and deliveries to offices as well as mobile robots in production that move transports and rotary stacking containers. The experience gained flows directly into the development of a new low-cost automation product line, the "ReBeL on Wheels". Their goal: to pave the way for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to move towards low-cost mobile robotics.

Mobile Rebel solutions for education, logistics and service

The Rebel forms the basis of any mobile robotic system. The use of plastic makes the robot particularly cost-effective and, at 8.2 kilograms, the lightest service robot with cobot function in its class. All of the mechanical components that make up the Rebel are developed and manufactured by Igus. Its payload is 2 kilograms and it has a reach of 664 millimeters. Various mobile systems are planned in which the Rebel is centrally integrated: Igus is starting with an affordable version for the education sector, including the robot arm. Equipped with a gripper, the Rebel Edu-Move serves as an autonomous learning platform for educational institutions thanks to open source. It has a modular design and can be flexibly expanded with additional functions such as lidar, camera technology or a slam algorithm. Another variant is a driverless transport system for SMEs. It can transport up to 30 kilograms. With the optional Rebel, simple A to B positioning can be carried out. It dispenses with expensive sensor technology and instead relies on 3D sensor technology developed in-house.

A lighthouse project on wheels

The goal of all these developments is the lighthouse project, a mobile robot with integrated HMI and vision that could even tidy up an office on its own. "With this project, we are pursuing a bottom-to-top strategy in which certain components such as safety laser scanners are not included in the basic package in order to keep the price low," explains Alexander Mühlens, authorized signatory and head of the Low-Cost Automation division at Igus.

"Nevertheless, it is ensured that the solution can be retrofitted for industrial requirements." Among other things, this year Igus is presenting an affordable gripper with a large stroke and travel range that offers a high degree of flexibility when gripping different geometries. Alexander Mühlens: "The areas of application for this targeted low-cost AMR are extremely diverse and go far beyond simple transportation tasks. They cover a huge range of applications in various areas of life, such as cleaning tasks or serving coffee directly at the workplace."