Building an AMR from Zero

Companion articles to the Build an AMR from Zero video series.

Three views of BEEBOT2: a cutaway three-quarter view showing the internal decks, a front view, and the closed outer shell. — BEEBOT2 as designed — a differential-drive indoor AMR: two driven wheels on a common axis, casters for balance. This is the enclosure concept; the scanners the robot needs from article 09 onward are not shown on it.

The videos show the build. These articles are the notes behind them — the numbers, the parameters, the failures, and the reasoning that does not fit in ten minutes of screen time.

The philosophy

The robot is the main character. ROS 2, Gazebo, LiDAR, IMU, SLAM and Nav2 are just tools that give it new abilities. It is organised as:

flowchart TD
  A["Robot knows nothing"] --> B["how to drive"]
  B --> C["how to take commands"]
  C --> D["how to feel its own motion"]
  D --> E["how to see the env"]
  E --> F["how to build a map"]
  F --> G["where it is"]
  G --> H["where to go"]
  H --> I["how to avoid obstacles"]
  I --> J["how to protect itself"]
  J --> L["how to do a job"]
  L --> M["how to talk to server"]

  classDef step fill:#e7e5e4,stroke:#57534e,color:#1c1917
  class A,B,C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L,M step

Every article is one step of that ladder. Each one starts from a problem the robot cannot yet solve, builds the smallest thing that solves it, tests it, and ends with the next problem.

The plan — four phases

Twenty-two articles, grouped by what the robot can do at the end of each block. A phase is finished when its exit criterion is met on the robot, not when its last article is published.

Phase	Articles	The robot goes from…	…to
1 · It moves	01 – 07	nothing	a body that drives, in two worlds
2 · It senses	08 – 10	blind and unaware	measuring motion, space and energy
3 · It navigates	11 – 16	driven	deciding its own route
4 · It works	17 – 22	a demo	a machine that can be left running

The final target

Everything above points at one thing:

BEEBOT2 accepts a mission from a system that has never heard of ROS 2, drives to a point in a warehouse it mapped itself, moves a payload, returns to its dock and charges — unattended, repeatably, on real hardware, while a second robot works the same aisles.

Repeatably and on real hardware are the load-bearing words. In line with the one rule below, the target is written as numbers that can be checked, together with where the project actually stands against each:

Who this is for

Robotics, mechatronics and automation students.
Engineers learning robotics, or moving from ROS 1 to ROS 2.
Anyone who wants a practical route into AMRs rather than a tutorial tour of individual packages.