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Design and Implementation of a Maxi-Sized Mobile Robot (Karo) For Habibian et al. Robomech J (2021) 8:1 https://doi.org/10.1186/s40648-020-00188-9 RESEARCH ARTICLE Open Access Design and implementation of a maxi-sized mobile robot (Karo) for rescue missions Soheil Habibian1*† , Mehdi Dadvar1† , Behzad Peykari1, Alireza Hosseini1, M. Hossein Salehzadeh1, Alireza H. M. Hosseini1 and Farshid Najaf2,3 Abstract Rescue robots are expected to carry out reconnaissance and dexterity operations in unknown environments compris- ing unstructured obstacles. Although a wide variety of designs and implementations have been presented within the feld of rescue robotics, embedding all mobility, dexterity, and reconnaissance capabilities in a single robot remains a challenging problem. This paper explains the design and implementation of Karo, a mobile robot that exhibits a high degree of mobility at the side of maintaining required dexterity and exploration capabilities for urban search and rescue (USAR) missions. We frst elicit the system requirements of a standard rescue robot from the frameworks of Rescue Robot League (RRL) of RoboCup and then, propose the conceptual design of Karo by drafting a locomotion and manipulation system. Considering that, this work presents comprehensive design processes along with detail mechanical design of the robot’s platform and its 7-DOF manipulator. Further, we present the design and implemen- tation of the command and control system by discussing the robot’s power system, sensors, and hardware systems. In conjunction with this, we elucidate the way that Karo’s software system and human–robot interface are implemented and employed. Furthermore, we undertake extensive evaluations of Karo’s feld performance to investigate whether the principal objective of this work has been satisfed. We demonstrate that Karo has efectively accomplished assigned standardized rescue operations by evaluating all aspects of its capabilities in both RRL’s test suites and train- ing suites of a fre department. Finally, the comprehensiveness of Karo’s capabilities has been verifed by drawing quantitative comparisons between Karo’s performance and other leading robots participating in RRL. Keywords: Field and service robotics, Telerobotics, Mobile robotics, Search and rescue robots, Mechanism design of mobile robots, RoboCup rescue, Robot manipulation, Standard test methods, Response robots, Robot sensing systems Introduction abilities, they are mainly expected to play infuential roles Natural and manmade disasters have caused heavy casu- in urban search and rescue (USAR) [2], nuclear feld alties and signifcant economic damages over the past emergency operations [3], and mine rescue missions [4]. few decades. As the impacts of catastrophes are increas- Practically speaking, a rescue robot needs to demonstrate ing, the necessity of rescue robotics, which explores mobility, dexterity, reconnaissance and exploration capa- solutions to minimize the casualties for all phases of a bilities to efcaciously accomplish an USAR mission [5]. disaster, has increased as well [1]. Due to peerless capa- Tese principal capabilities practically empower rescue bilities of rescue robots compared to human and canine robots to overcome obstacles, remove rubbles, explore and map unknown environments, detect victims, and deliver essential objects, such as bottle of water, food *Correspondence: [email protected] †Soheil Habibian and Mehdi Dadvar contributed equally in this paper and drug, to victims’ locations. Although the minimum 1 The Authors Were With Advanced Mobile Robotics Lab, Qazvin Azad required levels of those capabilities vary in a rescue robot University, Qazvin, Iran depending on its application, embedding a standard level Full list of author information is available at the end of the article of those complementary capabilities in a single system © The Author(s) 2021, corrected publication 2021. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creat iveco mmons .org/licen ses/by/4.0/. Habibian et al. Robomech J (2021) 8:1 Page 2 of 33 poses various critical challenges which is the primary are focused on mobility and maneuverability capa- motivation of this work. bilities and neglect dexterity and manipulation skills Te very frst academic attempts in the feld of rescue which have resulted in the elimination of the systems’ robotics have been done by two groups at Kobe Univer- functionality. sity in Japan [6] and the Colorado School of Mines in Mobile manipulators enhance the dexterity capabilities the United States motivated by Kobe earthquake and of rescue robots by enabling them to open/close doors the bombing of Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma and valves, remove rubbles and obscurations, inspect City respectively. However, the mobile platforms intro- the environment, and interact with victims. Embedding duced in [7] and [8] can also be known as two early dexterity capabilities into a highly mobile rescue robot experimental eforts in design and implementation of raises serious design and implementation challenges. In mobile robot platforms which were potentially suited this regard, [23] presents a mobile robot design based on for USAR, though the authors did not explicitly men- hybridization of the mobile platform and manipulator. tion their USAR applications. Later on, rescue robot- Although this hybridization empowers the robot in term ics started getting more attentions gradually among of mobility capabilities, the manipulator itself hardly sat- the mobile robotics research community [9], which led isfes minimum dexterity requirements of a dexterous to developing rescue robots with a variety of locomo- rescue robot. In another efort, a prototype of a 4-fip- tion mechanisms such as spherical [10, 11], legged [12], per mobile platform is presented in [24] that has been wheeled [13], and tracked [14] locomotion. integrated with a commercial 5-DOF (degrees of free- Track-based locomotion mechanisms provide more dom) robot arm. Although this integration has resulted versatilities with lower levels of complexities compared in standard dexterity capabilities of the robot, the non- to other locomotion mechanisms [15]. In this regard, tracked design of the robot’s chassis is still a consider- diferent attempts have been done on proposing vari- able issue while facing unstructured obstacles. Next, [25] ous designs for tracked rescue robots in diferent sizes, introduces a ground mobile robot which has two paral- as [5] categorizes them into man-packable, man-port- lel tracks and is equipped with a heavy-duty manipulator. able and maxi-sized types. On this subject, [16] and Similarly, this work does not present a standard embed- [17] present two man-packable tracked rescue robot ding of mobility and dexterity capabilities due to the lack designs. Te former develops a paradigmatic system of assistive mobility mechanisms such as fippers which called inspection robotic system to demonstrate the restrains robot’s mobility skills. Te problem gets even feasibility of mechatronic solutions for inspection oper- more complicated when robots presented in [23–25] ations. Te latter proposes the design and development lack reconnaissance and exploration aspects required of a novel reconfgurable hybrid wheel-track mobile for a rescue robot which can be a principal shortcoming robot which is constructed based on a Watt II six-bar in situations where data acquisition is a prerequisite for linkage. Furthermore, [18] demonstrate the application performing maneuvering or dexterity tasks. of Quince, a man-packable rescue robot, in an emer- Although there are works addressing the exploration gency response to the nuclear accident at the Fukush- and reconnaissance capabilities of rescue robots, little ima Daiichi nuclear power plants. Although in [16–18] attention has devoted to embedding all three principal diferent man-packable rescue robots with various lev- capabilities of rescue robots, i.e. mobility, dexterity, and els of mobility are presented, man-portable and maxi- exploration. For instance, [26] presents a highly mobile sized rescue robots perform higher degrees of mobility tracked rescue robot equipped with four fippers which and stability while facing more complex obstacles and are empowered to accomplish exploration and dose are well-suited to be equipped with a variety of assis- measurement tasks. However, the manipulation capa- tive mechanisms and accessory devices. For instance, bilities of the robot are only limited to sampling func- [19] develops a tracked man-portable rescue robot that tions by way of a simple 2-DOF manipulator which is is not equipped with assistive mobility mechanisms an inadequacy for many dexterity operations. Similarly, such as fippers, while the surveyor type robot imple- the rescue robot design introduced by [27] satisfes the mented in [20] and the
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