TY - JOUR
T1 - Articulated hybrid mobile robot mechanism with compounded mobility and manipulation and on-board wireless sensor/actuator control interfaces
AU - Ben-Tzvi, Pinhas
AU - Goldenberg, Andrew A.
AU - Zu, Jean W.
PY - 2010/9
Y1 - 2010/9
N2 - This paper presents the development of a remotely operated mobile robot system with a hybrid mechanism whereby the locomotion platform and manipulator arm are designed as one entity to support both locomotion and manipulation interchangeably. The mechanical design is briefly described as well as the dynamic simulations used to analyze the robot mobility and functionality. As part of the development, this paper mainly focuses on a new generalized control hardware architecture based on embedded on-board wireless communication network between the robot's subsystems. This approach results in a modular control hardware architecture since no wire connections are used between the actuators and sensors in each of the mobile robot subsystems and also provides operational fault-tolerance. The effectiveness of this approach is experimentally demonstrated and validated by implementing it in the hybrid mobile robot system. The new control hardware architecture and mechanical design demonstrate the qualitative and quantitative performance improvements of the mobile robot in terms of the new locomotion and manipulation capabilities it provides. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate new operative tasks that the robot was able to accomplish, such as traversing challenging obstacles, and manipulating objects of various capacities; functions often required in various challenging applications, such as search and rescue missions, hazardous site inspections, and planetary explorations.
AB - This paper presents the development of a remotely operated mobile robot system with a hybrid mechanism whereby the locomotion platform and manipulator arm are designed as one entity to support both locomotion and manipulation interchangeably. The mechanical design is briefly described as well as the dynamic simulations used to analyze the robot mobility and functionality. As part of the development, this paper mainly focuses on a new generalized control hardware architecture based on embedded on-board wireless communication network between the robot's subsystems. This approach results in a modular control hardware architecture since no wire connections are used between the actuators and sensors in each of the mobile robot subsystems and also provides operational fault-tolerance. The effectiveness of this approach is experimentally demonstrated and validated by implementing it in the hybrid mobile robot system. The new control hardware architecture and mechanical design demonstrate the qualitative and quantitative performance improvements of the mobile robot in terms of the new locomotion and manipulation capabilities it provides. Experimental results are presented to demonstrate new operative tasks that the robot was able to accomplish, such as traversing challenging obstacles, and manipulating objects of various capacities; functions often required in various challenging applications, such as search and rescue missions, hazardous site inspections, and planetary explorations.
KW - Control hardware architecture
KW - Mobile robot
KW - Prototype integration
KW - Search and rescue
KW - Simulations
KW - Wireless communication
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77956393721&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77956393721&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.mechatronics.2010.06.004
DO - 10.1016/j.mechatronics.2010.06.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77956393721
SN - 0957-4158
VL - 20
SP - 627
EP - 639
JO - Mechatronics
JF - Mechatronics
IS - 6
ER -