Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) Robot

This robot was the result of two weeks work in a class. It may not be the greatest looking robot ever and may be made of out of lego, but it did win us first place in our USAR competition for being the most able rescue robot. We managed to rescue a lot of people from a mock building that had collapsed.

Even though this was a quick project, we did implement some cool stuff including:

• a tail lift was used to give the robot's back wheels a lift to get over high obstacles.
• an extremely ow center of gravity helps keep the robot from tipping.
• we used four wheel drive but cleverly connected wheel drive in parallel electronically so that we all motors would turn at equal rates. This allowed for high speed and high torque.
• our robot dances too!

The goal of USAR is to find people in collapsed buildings so that they may be rescued. Below our robot finds a doll sized university professor!

The winning group, Me, Andy and Steph relax outside the competition.

Here are some of our competitor's models:

For more information, you can check out the General Robotics Class Website, which offers information about the class taught by Howie Choset.