Parent-child robot system for rescue missions

High mobility, large obstacle performance, narrow space crossing-over capacity and stable data communication are important features for a rescue robot. The authors proposed a parent-child robot system that could achieve all of these abilities. The robot system is composed of a parent robot, a tracked child robot and a legged robot. The parent robot has high mobility and can climb over ordinary obstacles. The tracked child robot is relatively small and high mobility surveyor type. The legged child robot is also small and surveyor type as well, which has superior adaptability in narrow spaces. To achieve the mission, the parent robot first carries the two child robots to collect information about disaster and victims. When the parent robot encounters narrow space which it cannot get through, the child robots are released from the body of the parent robot by a manipulator to search for details in the narrow space. Meanwhile, the parent robot can be controlled to perform tasks in another place. When the parent robot detects that the wireless signal intensity is too low to communicate with the operator, the child robots can also be released as a network node to expand the area of the wireless network. So far we have developed prototypes of each robot. We have also proposed a method which confirms to be effective, using Zigbee and electronic compass to estimate the localization of the three robots. Finally, we put the three robots in test situations to simulate the disaster scenarios. The experimental results showed that the grouping parent-child robots have a strong ability to adapt the disaster situation.