Control Method for Rollover Recovery of Rescue Robot Considering Normalized Energy Stability Margin and Manipulating Force

Abstract

Various robots that operate in dangerous environments have been developed. A robot falling down is a critical incident, and many studies have been conducted to avoid the rollover situation. However, in a disaster site, the robot may rollover even if previous control methods are implemented. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a control method to recover from the rollover situation. The objective of this study is to realize autonomous control for the rollover recovery of a rescue robot. Initially, subcrawlers are controlled to reduce the normalized energy stability margin. Subsequently, if the robot cannot recover by using the subcrawlers, a manipulator is used to push the ground, rotate the robot, and then recover from the rollover situation. The experiment was performed to verify the effectiveness of the proposed control method using the Gazebo simulator where a dynamics engine, named the Open Dynamics Engine, was installed.