RFID-Based Autonomous Campus Delivery Trolley

Abstract

Autonomous mobile robots are increasingly being considered for repetitive transport tasks in environments where routes and operating areas can be controlled. This paper presents a low-cost RFID-based autonomous campus delivery trolley intended for controlled indoor routes. The system integrates an ESP32 controller, four geared encoder motors, encoder feedback, MPU6050 heading correction, RFID checkpoint confirmation, three-direction ultrasonic obstacle sensing, secure servo locking and application-assisted delivery coordination. The delivery compartment remains locked during movement and is released only after recipient authentication through RFID, with OTP provided as a backup. A simple request workflow allows the requester to specify the item, quantity, pickup location and destination, while the pickup-side user confirms loading. The design deliberately avoids LiDAR-based mapping, camera-based SLAM and ROS for the initial prototype, reducing hardware and integration complexity while retaining the functions required for repeatable point-to-point campus delivery. Since the prototype is under development, final performance values are reserved for the hardware-integration and testing stage.

Index Terms—Autonomous delivery trolley, ESP32, RFID, MPU6050, encoder odometry, ultrasonic obstacle detection, secure delivery, campus robotics.