Development of a serpentine omnitread robot for searching in explosive gas atmospheres

Purpose - There is explosive gas in many disaster environments. The conventional search and rescue robots are not allowed to work in these environments, since they may cause explosion. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of the serpentine omnitread robot HITSR-I for w...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Industrial robot 2011-01, Vol.38 (5), p.469-475
Main Authors: Zhao, Jie, Han, Zhenfeng, Liu, Gangfeng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Breakdowns
Climbing
Design
Design engineering
Dust
Evacuations & rescues
Explosions
Obstacles
Relay
Robots
Seals
Searching
Segments
Sensors
Serpentine
Studies
Technological change
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Purpose - There is explosive gas in many disaster environments. The conventional search and rescue robots are not allowed to work in these environments, since they may cause explosion. The purpose of this paper is to describe the design and development of the serpentine omnitread robot HITSR-I for working in these areas.Design methodology approach - HITSR-I consists of four segments, and each segment is equipped with crawlers in the four directions. It can be operated even under the situation of sideslip without any recovering actions. There are pressed CO2 containers and the pressurized control system inside the robot, and the shells of the robot are a fully sealed up structure. They can maintain the inside pressure higher than the outside. The robot can release the communication relay node to extend the communicating area, so it can search a large area even amid rubble.Findings - HITSR-I was developed with the capability of climbing over 400 mm high obstacles. The maximum travel distance was 315 m. The pressurized system could enable the robot to work in Zones 1 and 2.Originality value - Design and development of a serpentine robot which can work in hazardous areas containing explosive gas. It can travel for a long distance in ruins by releasing the communication relay nodes.
ISSN:0143-991X
1758-5791
DOI:10.1108/01439911111154036