Spiral model development of retrofitted robot for tele-operation of conventional hydraulic excavator

This paper describes the effect of applying spiral model to the development process of robot system for a new entrant company. The robot system was developed to remotely control a conventional hydraulic excavator in order to improve the safety of operators in disaster emergency restoration. The issues of development are the definition of requirements and integration for a practical system in a real environment by a new entrant company. The constraints to the new entry of smaller companies are the following three points. (1) Lack of industry knowledge and data to define requirements (2) Lack of on-site environment and machinery for investigation and testing (3) Lack of experience in robot development To solve the problems under these constraints, the spiral model divides the development based on the prototype into 4-steps, and repeats this series of processes. This method was applied to clarify the necessary functions and performance of the robot step by step, and to construct a system with robustness in a real environment. As a result, this robot system has been successfully utilized in emergency disaster recovery tasks due to landslides, and removing debris in the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, reducing the mental and physical burden on the operators.