Research on rescue robots with force sensors on the fingertips for rubble withdrawal works

Abstract

The purpose of this research is a proposal of a rubble withdrawal method using force sensors attached on fingertips of a rescue robotpsilas hand in order not to break down rubbles. Most of previous researches of rescue robots are concerned with search robots for victims under broken houses. Thus, we try to build a rescue robot in order to remove rubble and rescue victims after a search process. Then we aim to build an algorithm to estimate characteristics of dynamics or grasping positions of rubbles by time responses of force sensors and tracking results of changes of postures obtained by camera images. In this paper, as the fundamental study, we examine whether the robot can estimate grasping positions when it grasps and lifts up the rubble which the mass distribution is uniform and has various shapes. Then, it will be considered that characteristics of dynamics and a grasping position of the rubble can be estimated depending on grasping forces.