Development of a tracked mobile robot equipped with two arms

This paper describes a development of a tracked mobile robot that consists of two tracks and two arms. A rescue robot should be able to not only move and explore in a disaster area but also complete handling tasks by itself. A tracked mobile robot with two 4-degrees-of-freedom arms was developed in this study. The robot can remove an obstacle or handle a target object in its movement by using one or both arms, which are controlled by remote commands. The robot also has a vision system to assist an operator in detecting target objects. Experimental results for fundamental handling tasks showed the usefulness of the robot system.