Continuous landmines scanning using legged robot with manipulator arm over rough terrain

Abstract

In this paper, we introduce a new scanning technique for detecting landmines and unexploded ordnance (UXO). The manipulator arm carried by a hexapod robot is capable of scanning rough terrain using a typical mine detector. To speed up the landmine detection and marking, both scanning and moving forward will be done simultaneously. The controller will perform two tasks. The first task is to keep the sensor-head in a fixed level with respect to the ground and the second task is to keep the base of the arm within a specified range of position and orientation. A coupling between the velocity of the end-effector and the velocity of the manipulator base (robot body) is created to ensure the efficiency of the whole process. To verify the feasibility of our design, three experiments will be performed using simulation in MATLAB. The manipulator was modelled using SolidWorks.