Design and analysis of multipurpose mobile manipulator for defence application and study the dynamic effects on stability of an unmanned tracked vehicle

Manipulator arms on an unmanned tracked vehicle are widely used for handling different defence application in an undulated terrain condition. Therefore, it is important to design a suitable multipurpose mobile manipulator without compromise the maneuverability of the unmanned ground vehicle. The criticality in the manipulator design is dynamic effect of the manipulator system should not affect the dynamic stability of the unmanned tracked vehicle during the motion. In this paper presents a design of two serial arm manipulator, each is having five degrees of freedom to carry mine detection sensor. Moreover, the same arm is designed to handling the mine clearance tools once the mine location is identified. In the case of mine detection, two arms are configured as parallel manipulator to carry a heavy sensor payload such as ground penetrating radar. For mine clearance, two serial arms are operating in cooperative mode with gripper for handling the mines. This paper also describes a Kinematic analysis using DenavitHertenberg method for the dual manipulator arm for determining the work envelope with consideration of vehicle operating kinematic constrains. Further, briefed about the folding and deployment trajectory for mine detection and clearance mission. The dynamics of the manipulator system while handling the heavy mine detection sensor are discussed using Newton -Euler approach. Further, integrated the dynamics of manipulator and unmanned tracked vehicle as single system and studied effect on maneuverability and stability of unmanned tracked vehicle. Here, Zero Moment Point stability index is proposed for determining the stability margin of integrated vehicle and manipulator system as a single system. The results and discussion of design, kinematic, dynamic and stability study for manipulator and vehicle during the mission are presented. The proposed method is the straight forward solution for studying the stability of integrated unmanned system.