Research on Components of Underground Excavation Robot

This paper describes the basic research for an underground excavation robot. This robot consists of three system components: the manipulation system, the locomotion system, and the task planning system. In order to keep the operator away from the hazardous worksite, the task should be performed through teleoperation or performed autonomously. Two different teleoperation systems using parallel link manipulators have been built for this purpose. A locomotion system has been proposed, consisting of a mobile platform supported by a pair of crawlers and four legs. A hierarchical control system with one host computer and nine transputers has also been developed. For excavation task planning, a measuring method using tactile sensor data has been proposed. With this method shape and stiffness of the target soil is determined from force and position data. These soil characteristics are passed to a cutting model of the soil and optimal parameters of excavation are estimated.