The CEO Mission II, Rescue Robot With Multi-Joint Mechanical Arm ( Abstract and Introduction )
Abstract- This paper presents design features of a rescue robot, named CEO Mission II. Its body is designed to be the track wheel type with double front flippers for climbing over the collapse and the rough terrain. With 125 cm. long, 5-joint mechanical arm installed on the robot body, it is deployed not only for surveillance from the top view but also easier and faster access to the victims to get their vital sign. Two cameras and sensors for searching vital signs are set up at the tip of the multi-joint mechanical arm. The third camera is at the back of the robot for driving control. Hardware and software of the system, which controls and monitors the rescue robot, are explained. The control system is used for controlling the robot locomotion, the 5-joint mechanical arm, and for turning on/off devices. The monitoring system gathers all information from 7 distance sensors, IR temperature sensors, 3 CCD cameras, voice sensor, robot wheels encoders, yawn/pitch/roll angle sensors, laser range finder and 8 spare A/D inputs.
All sensors and controlling data are communicated with a remote control station via IEEE 802.11b Wi-Fi. The audio and video data are compressed and sent via another IEEE 802.11g Wi-Fi transmitter for getting real-time response. At remote control station site, the robot locomotion and the mechanical arm are controlled by joystick. Moreover, the user-friendly GUI control program is developed based on the clicking and dragging method to easily control the movement of the arm. Robot traveling map is plotted from computing the information of wheel encoders and the yawn/pitch data. 2D Obstacle map is plotted from data of the laser range finder. The concept and design of this robot can be adapted to suit many other applications. As the Best Technique awardee from Thailand Rescue Robot Championship 2006, all testing results are satisfied
I. INTRODUCTION
Rescue robot design and implementation is an interesting combination of allowing basic research while being application oriented. The focus for the rescue robot application is on difficult terrain and simple platforms that mainly act as mobile explorer by cameras. Rescue Robots are designed in many ways. Their most functions usually are for exploration and collecting information of victims in the hazardous situation which is too risky to send human inside. Some rescue robots use their small size features for going deep into area. The robot from Tiny Seekers team (Japan) is the good example of small size and walking robot which has the good point of going into narrow place and overcoming rugged terrain. However the small size robots will have a problem if they want to climb over the step that’s higher than their height and want to move fast. There are some jumping rescue robots
which try to move over the high obstacles by using a pneumatic cylinder. Many times the explorers need to look from top view or look over partition for making decision of journey. Such as the rescue robot from CEO Mission I Team (Thailand), the camera on the top of 125-cm. high mast is used for looking over the 80-cm. high partitions and accurately marks the locations of victims in the competition arena. In whatever way, the high mast equipment is only having two degree of freedoms. It can not stretch to any desire directions for sensing victim’s vital sign. So we solve this problem with the design and implementation of a rescue robot with five degree of freedoms mechanical arm which can stretch to 125 cm. long. Many sensors can be installed at tip of arm, for situation surveillance from high level as well as getting vital sign of victims easier and faster. This paper focuses on the systems of hardware and software which control robot locomotion and mechanical arm movement. It gives the details to the hardware and software of monitoring system as well. The rest of this paper is structured as follows. Section two gives an overview of the hardware of the robot. In section three, the robot mechanical parts are explained. Section four illustrates the sensors equipped on the robot. Section five gives the detail of the basic software aspects and the higher level software on board the robot. The software on the operator station is also presented in this section. Section
six is the testing results and discussions. Section seven is the conclusion and the future work.
Author Bio: Amon Tunwannarux and Supanunt Tunwannarux The University of the Thai Chamber of Commerce(UTCC)
Category: Computers and Technology
Keywords: Rescue Robot