Tetsuya Kinugasa, Ryuto Iwado, Naoki Miyamoto, Koji Yoshida, Takafumi Haji, Masamitsu Kurisu, Masayuki Okugawa, Hisanori Amano, Ryota Hayashi
WHAT RANGE OF VISIBLE AREA IS ENOUGH FOR TELEOPERATION OF FLEXIBLE MONO-TREAD MOBILE TRACK?
The paper provides a shelled track using bent track shoes and a dual-camera system for flexible mono-tread mobile track (FMT). Some previous prototypes of FMT could traverse on various rough terrains. However, an edge of the track shoe deflected when they touched to a prominence of obstacles and interfered to the body. The side surface of the FMT was not covered with the track shoe; thus, the weak parts made of ABS plastic were broken. Moreover, there is no practical camera system for teleoperation of FMT. Generally, a bird’s-eye view is practical for teleoperation of a small ground vehicle. However, a camera (sometime with a long arm) and a laser sensor for the bird’s-eye view implemented on the robot’s deck is not suitable to take advantage of FMT, i.e., almost all the surface is covered by the track belt. Therefore, we introduce a prototype, RT05-COBRA with shelled track shoes, propose a dual-camera system covered a wide-range in a horizontal plane for FMT, and evaluate its mobility under teleoperation.
