Rescue robots are expected to carry out reconnaissance and dexterity operations in unknown environments comprising unstructured obstacles. Although a wide variety of designs and implementations have been presented within the field of rescue robotics, embedding all mobility, dexterity, and reconnaissance capabilities in a single robot remains a challenging problem. This paper explains the design and implementation of Karo, a mobile robot that exhibits a high degree of mobility at the side of maintaining required dexterity and exploration capabilities for urban search and rescue (USAR) missions. We first elicit the system requirements of a standard rescue robot from the frameworks of Rescue Robot League (RRL) of RoboCup and then, propose the conceptual design of Karo by drafting a locomotion and manipulation system. Considering that, this work presents comprehensive design processes along with detail mechanical design of the robot’s platform and its 7-DOF manipulator. Further, we present the design and implementation of the command and control system by discussing the robot’s power system, sensors, and hardware systems. In conjunction with this, we elucidate the way that Karo’s software system and human–robot interface are implemented and employed. Furthermore, we undertake extensive evaluations of Karo’s field performance to investigate whether the principal objective of this work has been satisfied. We demonstrate that Karo has effectively accomplished assigned standardized rescue operations by evaluating all aspects of its capabilities in both RRL’s test suites and training suites of a fire department. Finally, the comprehensiveness of Karo’s capabilities has been verified by drawing quantitative comparisons between Karo’s performance and other leading robots participating in RRL.

Nowadays, in every industrial field, one of the most important key item to be research is to eliminate or control of system's vibrations. In spite of this fact that the destructive and undesirable vibrations, will have a detrimental effect on the main system, it will also have negative impact on all machinery equipments in any complex. In this paper, we attempt to present a new design for Adaptive Tuned Dynamic Vibration Absorber (ATDVA), Based on Smart Slider-Crank Mechanism. This research will also investigate a practical scheme which is applied to reduce the excessive beam vibration to an acceptable range by adding an absorber to a vibratory resonant beam, especially as an alternative to active vibration control.

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via the original article.