Contact points detection for tracked mobile robots using inclination of track chains

A tracked mobile robot has high mobility and stability to get over rough terrain by changing its form according to environments. However, it is hard for an operator to control the mechanism skillfully by remote control. One of the solutions of the problem is an implementation of an autonomous control system. A detection of distributed contact points between the crawlers and an environment enable the autonomous control. In this paper, the authors propose a distributed contact sensor for tracked vehicle. In order to apply touch sensors to each track shoe, a problem of electric wirings has to be solved because the crawler is rotating continuously. In our proposed method, contact points are detected by measuring inclination of track shoes optically. For optical sensing of the inclination, a special reflector is designed and evaluated. The authors developed a method for distributed contact sensing of tracked vehicle, and examined whether the sensor can detect contact point during the step climbing motion.