Development of a remote control system for construction machinery for rescue activities with a pneumatic robot

Abstract

Rescue activities at disaster sites often require the remote control of construction machinery to ensure the safety of the workers. A pneumatic 6-d.o.f. robot arm was developed to achieve the remote control of construction machinery. A lightweight fiber-knitted-type pneumatic artificial rubber muscle was selected as the actuator for the arm after considering portability and installation issues. A control system was then designed to remotely operate the pneumatic robot arms. The system consists of the slave and master side. The slave side is composed of two robot arms, a control box, a power generator and an air compressor. The master side consists of two joysticks and a laptop PC. A wireless LAN was employed to achieve the remote control. Construction machinery was retrofitted with the pneumatic robot and field tests were performed at a real construction site. The operation times using remote control and direct operation were compared. The results confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed system.