Development of crawler type rescue robot with 2 DOF flipper arms

Crawler type rescue robots with flipper arms have good running ability for rough terrains. Each flipper of these robots has a pitch DOF. The pitching motion of the flipper arms is effective to climb up a step obstacles. However, most of rescue robots cannot easily turn on stairs or steep ramps. In this paper, we developed a crawler type rescue robot that has a steering mechanism on each flipper arm. The flipper arm has 2 DOF and the flipper arm can move not only up and down but also left and right. We evaluate the displacement by sliding when the robot runs on the horizontal ramp with/without yawing motion.