Development of Mechanical Design of The Amphibious Robot

The aim of this research is to develop the mechanical design and compositions of the amphibious robot, which operate very efficiently, while walking on flat and rugged terrain as well as swimming under water, with the performance of its duty of detecting the operating zone by using a camera and multiple sensors. The total mass of the amphibious robot is about 24.5 kg. The design of the robot consists of the body which was made from Perspex type transparent and designed in two parts (front and rear parts). The movement of the robot while climbing obstacles is similar to the movement of the cockroach. The robot moves by three pairs of wheel legs, two pairs are named wheel legs-propeller (developed in this paper), each pair work by D.C motor and third pair type wheel legs (move without motor). When swimming in the water, two upper propellers were added at the outer surface of the top of each part of the body and the steering mechanism. The front and rear parts contain, mechanical and electrical components as well as four solar cells with charge controller in front part. The degree of freedom (DOF) of the amphibian robot body in this work was calculated (3 DOF). Using of LabVIEW program from National Instruments (NI) as the software in this work with data acquisition hardware to interface with the pc inside the robot as the main controller for the motors and sensors, program had been created to control the robot manually by user and automatically by inserting a path. Test had been made for the performance of the robot in flat ground, uneven ground and test for climbing the robot over an obstacle and go down in a hole as well as swimming of the robot in water with recording and storing the results.