Development of Snake-Like Rescue Robot Designed for Ease of Use-Successfully Combine Mobility with Operability-

Rescue operation is one of the most effective applications of snake-like robots, because it is very dangerous for human beings to locate survivors in collapsed buildings and, in addition, snake-like robots can move into narrow spaces to find survivors. However, previous rescue systems that use robots have a significant problem that is shortage of professional operators. To solve the problem, we have focused on volunteer non-professional staffs as operators of the rescue robots, and have developed a three dimensional snake-like robot that can be controlled easily. In this paper, we extend our previous works, and propose new snake-like robot which can be controlled easily by using simple steering wheel without losing mobility.

[1]  Yasuyoshi Yokokohji,et al.  Interface Design for Rescue Robot Operation , 2004 .

[2]  Shugen Ma,et al.  Dynamic analysis of 3-dimensional snake robots , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[3]  K. Suzumori,et al.  A mobile jack robot for rescue operation , 2005, IEEE International Safety, Security and Rescue Rototics, Workshop, 2005..

[4]  Koichi Osuka Search in Narrow Space by Snake-Like Robots , 2004 .

[5]  Masaki Yamakita,et al.  Control of locomotion and head configuration for 3D snake robot , 2002, Proceedings of the 41st SICE Annual Conference. SICE 2002..

[6]  Masayuki Arai,et al.  Development of "Souryu-III": connected crawler vehicle for inspection inside narrow and winding spaces , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).

[7]  Robin R. Murphy Marsupial and Shape-Shifting Robots for Urban Search and Rescue , 2000, IEEE Intell. Syst..

[8]  Kazuyuki Ito,et al.  操作性を考慮した情報収集ロボット : システムの設計概念とシステム構成の提案(レスキューシステム・レスキュー工学1) , 2004 .

[9]  Kazuyuki Ito,et al.  Snake-Like Robot for Rescue Operations — Proposal of a Simple Adaptive Mechanism Designed for Ease of Use , 2008, Adv. Robotics.

[10]  Howie Choset,et al.  A mobile hyper redundant mechanism for search and rescue tasks , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[11]  Keiji Nagatani,et al.  Three-dimensional localization and mapping for mobile robot in disaster environments , 2003, Proceedings 2003 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2003) (Cat. No.03CH37453).

[12]  Shigeo Hirose,et al.  Development of Helios VII: an arm-equipped tracked vehicle for search and rescue operations , 2004, 2004 IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) (IEEE Cat. No.04CH37566).