Soichiro Suzuki

Warning system for crawler-type mobile robot with passive sub-crawler

This paper describes a remote control system for a crawler-type mobile robot with a passive sub-crawler. Such a system is greatly advantageous because it has an essentially compliant mechanism in that the sub-crawler angle can be adapted to a road surface shape. Its operation is extremely simple, and it is only necessary to control the movement direction and driving speed in comparison with the case of controlling active sub-crawlers. However, a robot with a passive sub-crawler cannot recover from a situation in which it is stuck. The operator must select a traversable route for unknown rough terrain using only the information obtained from camera images and some sensor data from the robot. In this study, a remote control system for a crawler robot with a passive sub-crawler is developed based on a warning system. The currently selected route is evaluated by calculating the stabilization for the robot when falling down in the roll and pitch directions. Experimental results obtained using a prototype crawler robot with a passive sub-crawler demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed system.

Field experiment report for tunnel disaster by investigation system with multiple robots

This paper reports the field experiment of the teleinvestigation robot system for the tunnel disaster. In Japan, a new project “Robot Technology and Robot System for Next-Generation Social Infrastructure” was started in 2014 by MLIT. The features of this project are that providing actual field (bridges, tunnels, dams, rivers, landslides site and volcanic disaster site), and performing a field demonstration and experiment of robots. The proposed multiple robots system was selected as one of technique in the field for tunnel disaster investigation for this project. A field experiment was performed in order to evaluate the core technologies of the proposed robot system at the imitation tunnel facilities of the NILIM in Tsukuba (Japan) on November 5, 2015.