HELIOS VIII search and rescue robot: Design of an adaptive gripper and system improvements

Robotics research can help search and rescue operations with developing practical mobile platforms and tools for urban and industrial disaster response. Crawled vehicles, because of their terrain adaptability, have a considerable importance for rescue operations and tasks performed in unstructured environments. In this contribution we present the newest version of HELIOS robot (HELIOS VIII). It consists of the same mechanical concept introduced with its predecessor. Nevertheless all the efficient motion capabilities of HELIOS concept were maintained and improved. In this paper we will focus a lot on the development of a new gripper for HELIOS vehicle. It consists of four fingers actuated by one actuator and they can adapt to the grasped object surface. Besides we introduce also a special docking mechanism utilized for the connection of the vehicle with auxiliary crawler units.