Field Robots for Disaster Response
Motivation
In order to minimize the casualties and the secondary damage in the occur of a disaster, quick initial response and precise working ability are needed. However, existing disaster-response robots have only a single function such as fire suppression, crawling, and obstacle demolition, resulting in a decrease in operation efficiency due to lack of mobility in an environment with many obstacles or lack of heat resistance at a fire site. Therefore, it is necessary to study posture control mechanism that can overcome unstructured terrain, securing visible area in fire scene, and robots with heat resistance, because existing equipment is not enough for real life structure in disaster site.
Research Territories
(1) Development of hull driving system capable of independent driving and posture control in rough terrain
Due to debris such as pillars falling on the ground in a collapse of a building, an unstructured work environment occurs, which is difficult for general equipment and ordinary rescue workers to input directly. The main goal of this project is to develop a hull driving system capable of independent operation and posture control in rough terrain for the work in the disaster area and apply it to the site of an unsteady disaster such as a collapse site.
Designed equipment sub-structures have a frame different from general equipment in order to smoothly work in various unsteady disaster environments. It is equipped with a crawler mechanism that gives favorable movement in obstacle-like environment like existing equipment, and a posture mechanism that allows the driver to work in an improved environment in various disaster environments by attaching a leg configured to be able to move up and down and left and right. Then, to verify the feasibility of the design model, dynamic analysis was performed by creating a simple environment in which slopes, gradients, and steps exist.
(2-1) Development of armored robotic system to protect the life of the crew and disaster prevention work in the complex accident site
In large-scale buildings and industrial plant facilities, it is impossible to enter firemen in dangerous situations due to anticipation of toxic gas leakage, collapse or explosion of additional structures.
As a result of analyzing large-scale disasters such as Fukushima nuclear reactor accident, Gumi Foshan spill accident, Ulsan Hyundai Heavy Industry explosion accident, a armored robotic system equipped with technologies such as a robotic arm capable of disaster prevention and a crawler mechanism capable of overcoming the irregular obstacles generated due to the collapse of a building structure or a complex cause is needed.
(2-2) Dynamic analysis for deriving and verifying design elements of crawler mechanism
◯ The dynamic analysis is performed by describing the environments in various extreme situations obtained from topographic analysis.
◯ Environmental conditions description
- Inclination angle by artificial structure such as stairs 35° longitudinal direction, 10° lateral or less environment
- In an environment where some buildings collapse and mobile obstacles are present, the overtravel step is 0.5 m
- A large structure consisting of a wall with a minimum width of 2.3m or more and a height of 2.3m or more such as a door or sandwich panel
◯ Deriving design elements through dynamic analysis
- Analyzes torque of sprocket in extreme situation and extracts necessary motor specification data
- Analyze the force applied to the cylinder when the obstacle is overcome to derive data so that the hydraulic cylinder can be selected.
◯ Design verification through dynamic analysis
- Force analysis of the crawler shock absorber by the weight of the car in extreme conditions
- Feasibility Analysis of Moving Range of Suspension due to Driving