Fundamental development of a virtual reality simulator for four-arm disaster rescue robot OCTOPUS

This paper presents a virtual reality (VR) simulator for four-arm disaster response robot OCTOPUS, which has high capable of both mobility and workability. OCTOPUS has 26 degrees of freedom (DOF) and is currently teleoperated by two operators, so it is quite difficult to operate OCTOPUS. Thus, we developed a VR simulator for training operation, developing operator support system and control strategy. Compared with actual robot and environment, VR simulator can reproduce them at low cost and high efficiency. The VR simulator consists of VR environment and human-machine interface such as operation-input and video- and sound-output, based on robot operation system (ROS) and Gazebo. To enhance work performance, we implement indicators and data collection functions. Four tasks such as rough terrain passing, high-step climbing, obstacle stepping over, and object transport were conducted to evaluate OCTOPUS itself and our VR simulator. The results indicate that operators could complete all the tasks but the success rate differed in tasks. Smooth and stable operations increased the work performance, but sudden change and oscillation of operation degraded it. Cooperating multi-joint adequately is quite important to execute task more efficiently.