Design of a 2DOFs Pantograph Leg Mechanism for Rapid Response Robot Platform in Nuclear Power Plant Facilities

If an accident occurs in nuclear facilities and emergency work is required in a hazardous area where human workers cannot access it, the use of robots can be a good alternative way to doing the work. However, in order to perform emergency operations quickly and successfully in the emergency situations, rapid mobility of the robot is very important. We visited nuclear power plants several times to investigate the situation in the areas that need to be accessed in order to perform emergency tasks in the event of accidents and built a test mockup with many obstacles for robots as depicted in Fig.1 and Table 1. It is believed that the passages to those areas do not allow fast access not only to wheels or track-type robots, but also to biped robots walking like humans [1,2]. In order to overcome large obstacles, the legs of a biped robot have a large workspace. It is also very important for bipedal walking robots to lighten their legs for fast walking, and it is advantageous that heavy actuators driving each joint of the legs are placed as close to the body as possible [3].