Autonomous Robot Delivers Open Liquids Container Without Spilling a Drop

Dec. 4, 2023

TDK’s engineers utilize 10 different sensors to build a robot that can deliver a glass of liquid over rough terrain.

Check out our Sensors Converge 2023 coverage.

Ok, TDK doesn’t build robots, but it does provide a wide range of sensors and other electronic devices that will be found on just about any robot. Anson Yeganegi, Director, System Solutions at TDK, gave me a demo of the company’s delivery robot (Fig. 1) that takes advantage of 10 of its sensor systems.

1. TDK engineers tied multiple sensors from IMUs to ToF range sensors to build a robot that can keep a container of liquid level while the robot moves over uneven ground.

The brains of the system are hidden inside and include an NVIDIA Jetson, which is a popular host for robot developers. It typically works with a sensor integration device like TDK’s RoboKit 1 (Fig. 2). Eight of the sensors in the robot are part of the kit:

ICM-42688-P 6-axis inertial measurement unit (IMU)
ICS-43434 digital I²S microphone (x4)
ICP-10111 barometric pressure sensor
CH-101/201 time-of-flight (ToF) modules (x9) connected via flex cable
IIM-46230 industrial IMU module connected via flex cable
HVC4223F embedded motor controller
AK09918C AKM magnetometer
Temperature sensor

2. The RoboKit1 is based around a Cortex-M7 microcontroller along with over a dozen on-board and off-board sensors like an IMU.

The board includes a SAME70Q21B Cortex-M7-based microcontroller. It includes software that supports obstacle detection, floor-type detection, cliff detection, and dynamic heading detection. It provides sensor and motor-control support to the Jetson host, which handles high level navigation and planning.

TDK offers more kinds of sensors and electronic devices (Fig. 3) beyond those used in the RoboKit1 and in the demo. Many will find homes in similar applications or other robot designs.

3. Some of TDK’s wide range of sensors target robotic applications, while others are more specific, such as current sensors and Hall switches.

A good portion of the sensors in the RoboKit1 are mounted on the printed circuit board, but others are connected via cable, allowing them to placed elsewhere on the robot like the ToF sensor (Fig. 4).

4. The ToF sensor is just one of 10 different sensors used on the system.

The robot demo does a great job of highlighting the array of sensors currently utilized on robots. The days of basic bump sensors are long gone—more sensors are now needed to address the more robust support in high-complexity environments.

Check out more videos from our Sensors Converge 2023 coverage.

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About the Author

William G. Wong | Senior Content Director - Electronic Design and Microwaves & RF

I am Editor of Electronic Design focusing on embedded, software, and systems. As Senior Content Director, I also manage Microwaves & RF and I work with a great team of editors to provide engineers, programmers, developers and technical managers with interesting and useful articles and videos on a regular basis. Check out our free newsletters to see the latest content.

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I earned a Bachelor of Electrical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology and a Masters in Computer Science from Rutgers University. I still do a bit of programming using everything from C and C++ to Rust and Ada/SPARK. I do a bit of PHP programming for Drupal websites. I have posted a few Drupal modules.

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