• The Journal of the Korea institute of electronic communication sciences
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• v.17 no.5
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• pp.941-948
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• 2022

Disaster response robots are deployed to disaster sites where human access is difficult and dangerous. The disaster response robots explore the disaster sites prevent a structural collapse and perform lifesaving to minimize damage. It is difficult to operate robots in the disaster sites due to rough terrains where various obstacles are scattered, communication failures and invisible environments. In this paper, we developed a series connectable wheeled robot module. The series connectable wheeled robot module was developed into two types: an active driven robot module and a passive driven robot module. A wheeled robot was built by connecting the two active type robot modules and one passive type robot module. Two robot modules were connected by one DoF rotating joint, allowing the wheeled robot to avoid obstructions in a vertical direction. The wheeled robot performed driving and obstacle avoidance using only pressure sensors, which allows the wheeled robot operate in the invisible environment. An obstacle avoidance experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of the wheeled robot consisting of two active driven wheeled robot modules and one passive driven wheeled robot module. The wheeled robot successfully avoided step-shaped obstacles with a maximum height of 80 mm in a time of 24.5 seconds using only a pressure sensors, which confirms that the wheeled robot possible to perform the driving and the obstacle avoidance in invisible environment.