Design and manufacturing of a tele‐operative rescue robot with a novel track arrangement

Abstract

PurposeThe paper aims to describe the design and manufacturing process of a tele‐operative urban search and rescue tracked robot and discuss the advantages of a proposed novel track arrangement and other additional mechanisms, which help the robot to gain high manoeuverability on rough terrains.Design/methodology/approachUsing a simplified static model, required torques are calculated and appropriate mechanisms and geometric dimensions are chosen. Next, stress distribution is analyzed in the parts, deploying both classic and numerical methods and to complete the procedure parts are fabricated and assembled together. The architecture of control system and the user interface is introduced. Finally, the robot is tested on a standard test arena and the results are compared with another similar search robot.FindingsA tele‐operated rescue robot with considerable capabilities is designed and manufactured. The novel track arrangement and new rear arm's mechanism are tested and compared with a robot in the same class and higher performance is achieved on the evaluation.Originality/valueAlthough the implemented locomotion mechanism is the common tracked type, adding the center tracks and arrangement of arms are original ideas which help the robot to gain high manoeuverability. The proposed rear arm's linkage mechanism generates a limited rotational path and has an acceptable strength for a robot working in rescue missions.

Design and implementation of a maxi-sized mobile robot (Karo) for rescue missions

“…In the end, a practical concept is chosen by considering eliminated weaknesses of Karo's ancestors (see Sect. 2) and inspirations from outstanding features of contemporary similar platforms [19][20][21][22]. Figure 3 shows the side view of a conventional tracked response robot and its variations of mobility with several common locomotion configurations.…”

“…For instance, [19] develops a tracked man-portable rescue robot that is not equipped with assistive mobility mechanisms such as flippers, while the surveyor type robot implemented in [20] and the Packbot-like main rescue robot presented in are armed with two front flippers which empower them to overcome more elevated and obstacles stably. Moreover, there are some works introducing 4-flipper mechanical designs such as [21] and [22] which have heightened the robots' mobility skills to more sophisticated extent. All mentioned instances of man-portable and maxi-sized tracked rescue robots are focused on mobility and maneuverability capabilities and neglect dexterity and manipulation skills which have resulted in the elimination of the systems' functionality.…”

Unmanned Ground Vehicle with Virtual Reality Vision

“…weight, payload, speed, size, ...) renders a comprehensive performance evaluation of existing UGVs a none-trivial task. We restricted our comparison to the ADORA [9] and RAPOSA [11] UGVs, since both have similar design objectives as our UGV, specifically: mobility, victim identification, mapping (i.e., ability to generate 3D maps, of the surrounding areas and present them in an intuitive way), and HRI (i.e., ability to provide the operator with visual information about the robots' immediate surroundings). In addition to that, since delay is an important factor in teleoperated UGVs [23,24] and because our UGV relies on TCP for transmitting video over WiFi, we studied the effect of delay on received video over a range of distances.…”

“…In addition to that, in many designs, if the operator wants to visually inspect the environment from a different viewpoint, he/she has to move the whole UGV. Similarly, Adora [9] uses a sensor box with single camera all mounted on a movable arm. More screen area was dedicated for the video feed, but some is reserved for viewing data collected from sensors.…”

Stress Analysis of Switchover Module with Al6061-T6 and Al7075-T6 for Hybrid Locomotion Mobile Robot

“…Therefore, the effective locomotion mechanism will give the high flexibility and manoeuvrability to mobile robot to complete all harsh and complex tasks [6][7]. Mobile robots are mostly work in such harsh environments, where the entrance of any human to perform task is not safe or unaffordable [8]. The hybrid locomotion mobile robot designed by Bakhsh [5] was used in this study.…”