NIMS RD: A Rapidly Deployable Cable Based Robot

In this paper, we present NIMS RD, a rapidly deployable cable based robotic system developed for environmental monitoring applications. NIMS technology has been under continuous development resulting in several architectures including the NIMS RD system. This is an advance over previous systems in that its operation performance is improved, total system volume and mass is reduced, reliability is increased, and its deployment requires a smaller field team than for previous systems. The NIMS RD design will be described to highlight its new features and innovations. Also, NIMS RD field deployments will be discussed and some of the collected results displayed. Finally, future development directions for the NIMS RD system will also be discussed.