The design, modeling and control of a tethered aerial robot for serach and rescue missions

In this paper, a new tethered aerial robot for maneuvering around the buildings for an urban search and rescue (USAR) mission is introduced. The robot can enter from a hatch in order to search the indoor area of a collapsed house or maneuver around a building for search and rescue. This new mechanism is composed of an airship as a flying and hovering platform, and a Small Aerial Vehicle (SAV) as a high maneuverable robot. A light weight tether, which is strong enough, is used to connect the airship and the SAV. The airship transports the tethered SAV (T-SAV) to the desired location, lowers it and then supports it to gather information, using his high maneuverability. In contrast to other proposed platforms, this robot operates with very low noise, making it suitable for search and rescue missions to avoid drown out victims´ low voice. Moreover, the robot´s actuator´s vibrations are weak enough to avoid the occurrence of another collapse. This paper explains the design, modeling and controlling of the T-SAV. Finally, the first prototype of the T-SAV is explained.