Development of a prototype electrically-driven four-arm four-flipper disaster response robot OCTOPUS

In a previous study, we have developed a four-arm four-crawler disaster response robot called ‘OCTOPUS’. Advanced disaster response robots are expected to be capable of both mobility, such as entering narrow spaces over unstructured ground, and workability, such as preforming complex debris-removal work. We have confirmed experimentally that the four arms could make the robot perform complex tasks while ensuring stabilization when climbing steps while the four flippers could make it traverse rough terrain while avoiding toppling over when conducting manipulation task. OCTOPUS, renamed as H-OCTOPUS, is oil-hydraulically driven to perform outdoor demolition of heavy debris, and is teleoperated by two operators. In this study, we develop a prototype electrically-driven OCTOPUS, called E-OCTOPUS, to manipulate various light-objects mainly indoors such as valve operations in nuclear power plants. For reducing the size and weight while maximizing task performance, we introduced a mutual complementary strategy between its arms and flippers. To validate the capability of E-OCTOPUS, we performed preliminary experiments involving climbing high steps and manipulating and cutting wires by cooperating the four arms and four flippers. The results indicated that E-OCTOPUS could complete the tasks by coordinating its four arms and four flippers.