SUMMARY

A two-legged walking robot was designed, fabricated, and controlled through bilateral teleoperation via two PHANToM haptic devices. The Compact Rescue Crawler is a collaborative effort between Georgia Institute of Technology, Vanderbilt University, and North Carolina A&T working through the NSF Center for Compact and Efficient Fluid Power. The Georgia Institute of Technology contributions to this pneumatic testbed are a haptically controlled two-legged robot, operator workstation, an augmented reality interface, and a guided-gait routine allowing a single operator to effectively control six legs while maneuvering through treacherous and unknown terrain. The two-legged vehicle was built and is teleoperated from a remote operator workstation. The guided-gait routine was designed, as well. A force-based position controller coordinates 3D operator inputs into pneumatic cylinder stroke length commands and tracks position commands to within 10%. The controller tracks position in both free-space and ground contact scenarios, allowing the user to walk the robot remotely from the workstation and haptically feel the environment, and see the terrain through a head mounted display controlling an onboard PTZ camera.