Development of mobile inspection robot for rescue activities: MOIRA

TLDR

The paper presents MOIRA, a prototype mobile inspection robot designed for rescue operations. MOIRA is built with multiple articulated links, each equipped with small crawlers on all four sides. MOIRA can navigate through debris even when constrained from all four sides, operates without a fixed directional orientation, and continues functioning when sideslipping without recovery actions.

Abstract

In this paper we introduce our developed prototype mobile inspection robot for rescue activities named MOIRA. The robot consists of multi links and the four directions of each link are equipped with small crawlers. Due to the structural features, MOIRA has the following features. (a) MOIRA can go into the debris even if there is a restraint from the four directions (up-side, down-side, right-side and left side). (b) MOIRA does not have a concept of the four directions. That is, MOIRA can be operated even if the robot sideslips without any recover actions.