Operations like radioactive waste handling, bomb disposal, surveillance, search and rescue are today performed mostly by humans at great risk to their own safety and well-being. In order to minimize direct human intervention in such operations, the design of a remotely operated versatile Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV) mounted with a robotic manipulator is presented in this paper. The robustness, range and security of the communication link between the remote base station and the robot, obstacle avoidance and the real time control of the robot are some of the major issues encountered while deploying such robots in the above scenarios. In this paper, the design of a versatile UGV which leverages the already existing GSM mobile telephony network to establish a longrange, secure, fast and reliable connection with the remote base station is presented. The UGV is also mounted with a robotic manipulator with four degrees of freedom with a gripper type end-effector, which can be used for grabbing objects and thus help in search and rescue type operations. The robot is equipped with IR sensors and camera for obstacle detection and avoidance. The camera is also used to send the visual information back to the base station in real-time, allowing accurate control of and monitoring over long distances.
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