Open Access

Jens Weitkämper, Vera HummelORCiD, Jan SchuhmacherORCiD, Konrad von Leipzig

• Mobile manipulators combine the flexibility of collaborative robots with autonomous mobility, yet current systems lack a universal, flexible workpiece carrier that enables value-adding tasks to be performed during travel time between warehouse and production to increase overall productivity. Designing such a workpiece carrier poses significant challenges regarding standardization, flexibility, and platform compatibility. Specifically, the carrier must fit the smallest dimensions for intralogistics mobile manipulator while remaining adaptable in size to handle multiple workpieces and manipulation tasks simultaneously. This is crucial for expanding the functional scope of mobile manipulators beyond stationary applications, which dominate current practice. This paper deals with the development of a flexible and universally deployable workpiece carrier that allows mobile manipulators to conduct assembly and quality control operations during travel time. The core research question investigates how the carrier must be designed to enable such in-motion processes across different mobile manipulator platforms. A systematic approach based on the RFLP (Requirements–Functional–Logical–Physical) method is applied to design such a workpiece carrier. The study includes an analysis of existing collaborative robots and mobile manipulators, focusing on their typical tasks and operational constraints. The analysis reveals a clear gap because mobile manipulators, although increasingly used for intralogistics, currently lack the capability to execute value-adding tasks while moving. Initial results highlight key requirements for flexibility and standardization compliance to bridge this gap. The proposed design concept enables the flexible enlargement of the workpiece carrier’s surface to accommodate various tasks and workpiece sizes, ensuring seamless integration with multiple mobile manipulators. The main contribution of this work is a case-study-based investigation of how the RFLP method can be applied to design a flexible workpiece carrier for in-motion manipulation tasks.