Development of quadrupled robot for disaster site - Improvement of stable walking control on uneven terrain - 15227

At the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, which was seriously damaged by the Great East Japan Earthquake on March 11 in 2011, it has been difficult for workers to approach the reactor buildings due to the hazardous surrounding environment. The need had therefore arisen for remote-controlled robots to facilitate inspection and restoration works on behalf of workers in such high-level radiation environments. We have developed a quadruped walking robot that can carry various tools for decommissioning works. The robot can keep its balance while walking on uneven surfaces, slopes, and stairs due to control methods such as the autonomous determination of the leg trajectory and the center of gravity position of the robot, corrections of the leg landing positions and the body posture with an operator intervention according to the walking situation. This quadruped walking robot was applied to the investigation of suspected water leakage areas in the reactor building of Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Unit 2 in December 2012. In this study, we have improved the walking stability on uneven terrains by modifying the swing leg trajectory to reduce the impulse force at the time of landing and dynamically controlling the center of gravity of the robot by controlling the body position and posture. A validity of the above control methods were confirmed by simulation and experiments. (authors)