Development of a practical mobile robot platform for NBC disasters and its field test

In this research, we present development of a mobile robot platform integrated with off-the-shelf sensors and equipments for disaster response. The proposed platform aims to offer an opportunity for researchers and engineers to let their effort on developing more advanced methods related to disaster response, allowing for further development from R&D to practical or business purpose. Unlike the applications including research and education or military and civil defense forces, it is expected that the platform can be utilized for practical use with small initial budget and less effort for development. In this paper, we explain the development scheme of the proposed platform, which focuses on the outdoor environmental monitoring, and the progress on the development including its hardware and software configuration. Furthermore some experimental results, carried out in the nuclear power plant, are also shown.