A Concept for Rapidly-Deployable Cable Robot Search and Rescue Systems

This paper introduces a new concept for robotic search and rescue systems. This system uses a rapidly deployable cable robot to augment existing search and rescue mobile robots. This system can greatly increase the range of mobile robots as well as provide overhead views of the disaster site, allowing rescue workers to reach survivors as quickly as possible while minimizing the danger posed to rescue workers. In addition to the system concept, this paper presents a novel kinematic structure for the cable robot, allowing simple translation-only motion (with moment-resisting capability) and easy forward and inverse kinematics for a 3-DOF spatial manipulator. Also, a deployment sequence is described, a rapid calibration algorithm is presented and the workspace of the manipulator is investigated.Copyright © 2005 by ASME

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