AMOEBA-I: A Shape-Shifting Modular Robot for Urban Search and Rescue

This work intends to enhance the mobility and flexibility of a tracked mobile robot through changing its shape in unstructured environments. A shape-shifting mobile robot, AMOEBA-I, has been developed. With three tracked modules, AMOEBA-I has nine locomotion configurations and three of them are symmetrical configurations. The key advantage of this design over other mobile robots is its adaptability and flexibility because of its various configurations. It can change its configuration fluently and automatically to adapt to different environments or missions. A modularized structure of the control system is proposed and designed for AMOEBA-I to improve the fault tolerance and substitutability of the system. The strategies of cooperative control, including cooperative shape shifting, cooperative turning and cooperative obstacle negotiation, have been proposed to improve the capability of shape shifting, locomotion and obstacle negotiation for AMOEBA-I. A series of experiments have been carried out, and demonstrated that such a structure possesses excellent mobility and high flexibility under various urban environments including stairs, a narrow space, an obstacle, uneven debris and an underground garage. Being small, portable, and remotely controlled, AMOEBA-I has potential applications in areas such as urban search and rescue and environment reconnaissance. (C) Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden and The Robotics Society of Japan, 2009