Design concept of a prototype amphibious walking robot for automated shore line survey work

Abstract

There are many waterside areas such as shoals or shore lines in the port areas. One of the main work is survey work in such areas. For instance, the port authorities survey the shore lines to maintain encroached beach. Tidal flats are also surveyed to monitor the environment and the ecosystem. Some of the work in the areas are carried out on weak terrain. Consequently, the primary work force is still human-intensive although the mechanization and automatization are desired from the viewpoint of efficiency. Therefore, we are on the study of automated topographic survey work in waterside areas such as shore line. We consider that this is the same also in the waterside or underwater because walking machine does not damage the terrain seriously. We have verified the validity of the countermeasure suggested by us in the experiment on land. Consequently, we have started the development of a prototype amphibious walking robot which has some unique features in the structure and composition in order to experiment our proposed method in real sea. One of the structural features is the same mechanism of all joints, and they are independent respectively to each other as watertight type joint units. This feature contributes to the simplicity of the composition of the robot. Another structural feature is that the legs and the body unit are able to be detached easily in case of the maintenance. A design concept and the features of the prototype amphibious walking robot would be described in detail. And, the progress of development of the prototype robot would be reported.