This paper deals with the paddle type end of arm tool for rescue robot instead of rescue worker in dangerous environments such as fire, earthquake, national disaster and defense. It is equipped at the dual arm manipulator of the rescue robot to safely lift up an injured person. It consists of the paddle for lifting person, sensors for detecting insertion of person onto the paddle, sensor for measuring the tilting angle of the paddle, and mechanical compliance part for preventing incidental injuries. The electronics is comprised of the DAQ module to acquire the sensors data, the control module to treat the sensors data and to manage the errors, and the communication module to transmit the sensors data. After optimally designing the mechanical and electronical parts, we successfully made the paddle type end of arm tool and evaluated its performance by using specially designed jigs. The developed paddle type end of arm tool is going to be applied to the rescue robot for performance verification through field testing.

This paper proposes functional test methods of first-aid gadgets which are special end-effectors, for relief robot. In recent years, researches have been actively conducted on robots that can perform rescue operations on behalf of rescue workers in dangerous areas such as disasters and wars. These special robots mainly perform the task of finding or transporting injured people. However, it is sometimes they necessary to provide first aid in the field. Among the various first-aid operations, gadgets are being developed for oxygen supply, injection, and hemostasis operations that can be used in a defense/civilian area by using robot technology. Previous studies have proposed first-aid gadgets that are suitable for onsite situations and enable robots to perform the given task quickly and accurately. In this paper, we design a test procedure suitable for the functions of first-aid gadgets, summarize the results, and introduce future research directions.

This paper presents a force control based on the observer without taking any force or torque measurement from the robot which allows realizing more stable and robust human robot interaction for the developed multi-functional upper limb rehabilitation robot. The robot has four functional training modes which can be classified by the human robot interaction types: passive, active, assistive, and resistive mode. The proposed observer consists of internal disturbance observer and external force observer for distinctive performance evaluation. Since four training modes can be quantitatively identified as impedance variation, position-based impedance control with feedback and feedforward controller was applied to the assistive training mode. The results showed that the proposed sensorless observer estimated cleaner and more accurate force compared to the force sensor and the impedance controller embedded with the proposed observer completed the assistive training mode safely and properly.

This paper dealt with a pincers-type gripper being able to grip a heavy-weighted cylindrical object having various size with itself. This gripper should be designed to seize the objects without any change of jaw shape. Grasping achieved equilibrium after the object slipped on the jaw while grasping it. To cope with this situation, we suggested the slip considered gripper design procedure based on grasping equilibrium. The obtained slip condition can provide a limit friction coefficient depending on the contact angle when initiating contact between jaw and object. Consequently, the gripping force and the required actuating force can be calculated. In order to verify the proposed slip condition, the simulations were performed using a dynamic software.

This paper presents the estimation of the frictional coefficient of the wheel-legged robot with hip joint actuation producing maximum tractive force. Slip behavior for wheel-legged robot is analytically explored and physically understood by identification of the non-slip condition and derivation of the torque limits satisfying it. Utilizing results of the analysis of slip behavior, the frictional coefficients of the wheel-legged robot during stance phase are numerically estimated and finally this paper suggests the pseudo-algorithm which can not only estimate the frictional coefficients of the wheel-legged robot, but also produce the candidate of the touch down angle for the next stance.

This paper deals with researching and designing the fastening parts to be used in order to assemble various Teaching Aids Robots (or Hands-on Robots) with originally incompatible parts supplied by different manufacturers. The suggested fastening parts provide the compatibility among Teaching Aids Robots even though the educational robot customers use incompatible parts from different companies. The designed fastening parts are classified into four set groups such as frame set, sliding-bar set, connector set, and set of chuck and rivet/bolt. Each set of the fastening parts reflects the needs collected from the users, and then some portion of new idea has been added to implement the needs. In this paper, the examples of the Teaching Aids Robots which are assembled with both commercial parts and the designed parts are presented in order to evaluate the compatibility and usability of the suggested fastening parts. As a result, both compatibility and usability of the fastening parts suggested in this paper were proved. The designed fastening parts have been distributed to more than 100 elementary schools nationwide.

An increasing number of researches and developments for personal or professional service robots are attracting a lot of attention and interest industrially and academically during the past decade. Furthermore, the development of intelligent robots is intensively fostered as strategic industry. Until now, most of practical and commercial service robots are worked by remotely operated controller. The most important technical issue of remote control is a wireless communication, especially in the indoor and unstructured environments where communication infrastructures might be destroyed by various disasters. Therefore we propose a multi-robot following navigation method for securing the valid communication distance extension of the remote control based on WPAN(Wireless Personal Area Networks). The concept and implementation of following navigation are introduced and the performance verification is performed through real navigation experiments in real or test-bed environments.

Various robot platforms have been designed and developed to perform given tasks in a hazardous environment for the purpose of surveillance, reconnaissance, search and rescue, and etc. We have considered a terrain adaptive hybrid robot platform which is equipped with rapid navigation on flat floors and good performance on overcoming stairs or obstacles. Since our special consideration is posed to its flexibility for real application, we devised a design of a transformable robot structure which consists of an ordinary wheeled structure to navigate fast on flat floor and a variable tracked structure to climb stairs effectively. Especially, track arms installed in front side, rear side, and mid side are used for navigation mode transition between flatland navigation and stairs climbing. The mode transition is determined and implemented by adaptive driving mode control of mobile robot. The wheel and track hybrid mobile platform apparatus applied off-road driving mechanism for various professional service robots is verified through experiments for navigation performance in real and test-bed environment.