Design and preliminary experiments of a robot for searching interior of rubble

Since most of the victims of the big disasters are located in the interior of the rubble piles and only a small fraction of them can survive finally, robots that can search in confined spaces will locate and save more lives. This paper introduces a novel designed robot for search in narrow space where people and traditional robot can not enter due to size or toxic environment. With tendon-sheath transmission mechanisms, the steering head is actuated by servos remotely. No motors or control units are mounted on the joints. The robot is 3m long and only 40 mm in diameter. A CCD camera is mounted in front of the robot to search the victims. Experiments shown the robot can search interior of the rubble and be retrieved safely.