Research On A Fuel Driven Hopping Robot

Hopping is an efficient locomotion scheme for mobile robots to overcomeobstacles and travel in rough territory as compared to other schemes of groundlocomotion. Many animals use hopping scheme to travel in rough territory.Hopping robots have great capabilities to hop over big obstacles, ditches andbarriers. The main applications of hopping robots are in rescue activities,surveillance, military applications, environmental monitoring and exploration.For a successful hopping; stability, steering and hop angle are importantelements, which helps to hop in correct direction and to achieve desired heightand distance. It is very difficult for hopping robot to follow the trajectory andachieve target without steering and hop angle control systems.A fuel driven hopping robot with particular steering and hop angle controlsystem has been presented so far and called MC-I. The aim of this research workis to create a fuel driven hopping robot, analyze the driving system, design themechanism and research the control method. This research presents a new fuel driven hopping robot with settlement oftake-off angle and360degrees steering mechanisms. The proposed steeringmechanism steers the robot without changing the positions of its supports onground and also works in tight and narrow spaces. A prototype of hopping robotis also fabricated. It has a very simple set of mechanisms, which increases themobility of hopping robot to overcome the challenges during traveling roughterrain. Hopping robot has an algorithm to get distance&obstacle height withhelp of sensors, settles the take-off angle to cover desired distance, hop overobstacle efficiently and accurately. The structure has the ability to absorb shocks,which occurred during hopping and landing and also provides a protection towhole system structure.The robot introduced in this research work has great maneuverability. Therough terrain has various hindrances on ground-based robotic exploration. A newproposed hopping robot can hop on granular sand or dust, uneven and roughterrains easily. The fabricated prototype-hopping robot is equipped with advancedinformation processing ability and also has a strong freedom of movementcapability in complex terrain and nimble maneuverability in order to participateeffectively in action. Experiments also carried out on prototype of hopping robotto verify360steering and hop angle control systems.In this research, a novel miniature pressure regulator is studied andfabricated which is small in size and light in weight. The new small poppet isintroduced in this research work to hold high inlet pressure and maintain outletpressure as desired. Various experiments were performed to validate theperformance of miniature pressure regulator. Miniature pressure regulator installed on hopping robot to increase its hopping performance. The wirelesssensor network employed on hopping robot to improve robot’s sensorycapabilities; for surveillance and monitoring surroundings or physical conditions.The experiments demonstrated the good performance of the developedhopping robot. The uncomplicated hopping mechanism and control systemproduce a flexible hopping robot that can adjust to various obstacle heights andmake it suitable for exploratory tasks in low gravity environments.