DigiMobot: Digital Twin for Human-Robot Collaboration in Indoor Environments

Human-robot collaboration and cooperation are critical for Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) in order to use them in indoor environments, such as offices, hospitals, libraries, schools, factories, and warehouses. Since a long transition period might be required to fully automate such facilities, we have to deploy AMRs while improving safety in the mixed environments of human and mobile robots. In addition, human behaviors in such environments might be difficult to predict. In this paper, we present a Digital Twin for Autonomous Mobile Robots system named DigiMobot to support, manage, monitor, and validate AMRs in indoor environments. First, DigiMobot can simulate human behaviors and robot movements to verify and validate AMRs to improve safety in a virtual world. Secondly, DigiMobot can monitor and manage AMRs in the physical world by collecting sensor data from each robot in real-time. Since DigiMobot enables us to test the robot systems in the virtual world, we can deploy and implement AMRs in each facility without any modifications. To show the feasibility of DigiMobot, we develop a software framework and two different types of autonomous mobile robots. Finally, we conduct real-world experiments in a warehouse located in Saitama, Japan, in which more than 400,000 items are stored for commercial purposes.