Collision Avoidance and Stability Study of a Self-Reconfigurable Drainage Robot

The inspection and maintenance of drains with varying heights necessitates a drain mapping robot with trained labour to maintain community hygiene and prevent the spread of diseases. For adapting to level changes and navigating in the narrow confined environments of drains, we developed a self-configurable hybrid robot, named Tarantula-II. The platform is a quadruped robot with hybrid locomotion and the ability to reconfigure to achieve variable height and width. It has four legs, and each leg is made of linear actuators and modular rolling wheel mechanisms with bi-directional movement. The platform has a fuzzy logic system for collision avoidance of the side wall in the drain environment. During level shifting, the platform achieves stability by using the pitch angle as the feedback from the inertial measuring unit (IMU) mounted on the platform. This feedback helps to adjust the accurate height of the platform. In this paper, we describe the detailed mechanical design and system architecture, kinematic models, control architecture, and stability of the platform. We deployed the platform both in a lab setting and in a real-time drain environment to demonstrate the wall collision avoidance, stability, and level shifting capabilities of the platform.

Functional Design of a Hybrid Leg-Wheel-Track Ground Mobile Robot

This paper presents the conceptual and functional design of a novel hybrid leg-wheel-track ground mobile robot for surveillance and inspection, named WheTLHLoc (Wheel-Track-Leg Hybrid Locomotion). The aim of the work is the development of a general-purpose platform capable of combining tracked locomotion on irregular and yielding terrains, wheeled locomotion with high energy efficiency on flat and compact grounds, and stair climbing/descent ability. The architecture of the hybrid locomotion system is firstly outlined, then the validation of its stair climbing maneuver capabilities by means of multibody simulation is presented. The embodiment design and the internal mechanical layout are then discussed.

Studies on mobile robots for all types of terrain

In the first part of the paper, the authors present the characteristics of the robots for all types of terrain. In the second part, two categories of robots are proposed: a robot with hybrid locomotion system and a modular robot. For the last category, if different modules are combined, a family of modular robots adaptable to different types of terrain can be obtained. The solutions proposed by the authors allow the study of the mobility and adaptability of robots to different types of terrain.

Contributions to the development of search and rescue mobile robots

In this paper the authors present contributions to the development of search and rescue mobile robots. The first part of the paper describes the characteristics of search and rescue field. In the second part the authors presented the development and construction of an experimental prototype focusing on the locomotion systems for the search and rescue field and the results of the physical experiments done and the design and development of a proposed search and rescue mobile robot based on the lessons learned from the experiments. The third part contains the operation and control of the robot. The fourth section presents the simulation of the hybrid locomotion system of the proposed search and rescue mobile robot. The last part of the paper contains the development directions and conclusions.

Survey on the Development of Aerial–Aquatic Hybrid Vehicles

As the development of mobile robots matures, there is an increasing amount of interest in expanding the functionality of such robots through developing multimodal locomotion. As compared to land–water or land–air hybrids, the design of air–water vehicles is much less straightforward due to the fact that both mediums are three-dimensional fluid spaces and there is inherent disparity in fluid properties between them. As such, the development of these vehicles has received limited attention until very recently. Nevertheless, the potential applications of such vehicles range widely from military surveillance, oceanic data collection to heterogeneous robot team operation, which has led to an increasing number of projects working on aerial–aquatic hybrid mobility. In this paper, we discuss the fundamental challenges associated with aerial–aquatic hybrid locomotion as well as the necessary trade-offs in design decisions. We also summarize and review the existing work and prototypes of aerial–aquatic vehicles that have been designed thus far, analyzing the range of solutions that have been adopted to solve the aforementioned challenges. Lastly, the limitations of these solutions are analyzed to offer a perspective on how future developments in the area can enable greater functionality for the concept.

Investigation of Hybrid Locomotive Robot for Anti-Personnel Mine Detection

Most of landmine detection robots proposed so far have been strongly restricted from locomotion inside the mine field because they cannot cross over the mine. So we have proposed a mine detection robot with hybrid locomotion, which can enter inside the minefield with low ground surface contact, which can cross over the mine instead of changing its path and scan landmines directly using Electro Magnetic Induction sensor. The hybrid locomotion proposed in the robot uses the frame walking technique and the conventional wheeled locomotion. The robot switches over the locomotion mechanism from wheeled to leg when mine is detected and vice versa with a lead screw mechanism. The leg locomotion is achieved by frame walking technique where the two frames translate with the help of lead screw mechanism. A purpose of adopting this combination is to evade anti-personnel landmines which are relatively smaller in comparison to their anti-tank landmine counterparts. The robot initially starts in wheeled mode and upon detection of metal, pulls in the frame walking algorithm. The robot also deploys an obstacle avoidance algorithm when working in wheel mode.