Paper:
Development of Four-Crawler Multilink Mobile Robot MOIRA for Searching Debris
Koichi Osuka, and Hiroshi Kitajima
Department of Systems Science, Kyoto University, Uji, Kyoto, 611-0011 Japan
Finding victims in disaster debris is the priority in search-and-rescue operations. Attempts to use robots and other mobile devices instead of humans involve such problems as 1) operating when pressed from 4 sides, 2) difficulty in continuing operation or becoming inoperable when overturned, and 3) robot size restricting mobility on uneven terrain. We developed a robot overcoming these problems and surveying debris too closely packed and/or dangerous for human workers to enter. MOIRA, a linked crawler consisting of 4 linked modules, each having crawlers on 4 sides enabling the robot to solve the above problems and improve navigation on uneven terrain. We discuss the linked crawler and its 4-crawler systemuse and qualitatively demonstrate its feasibility. From experiments on operational performance, we quantitatively evaluated its feasibility.
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Copyright© 2003 by Fuji Technology Press Ltd. and Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers. All right reserved.