Development of a Robust Tracking Target Against Disturbance Noise for Tracking Control of Fire Fighting Robots.

An innovative robotic system was developed for a fire in a petrochemical complex, in which a hose extension robot follows a water cannon robot and moves to the fire. The follow-up run is realized using a reflector mounted on the preceding water cannon robot as the following target and measuring its relative position with an infrared ToF sensor mounted on the hose extension robot. However, when the infrared ToF sensor was measuring the tracking target and other reflectors on the firefighter's safety vest, fire engine, etc., were seen overlapping, they were misrecognized as one large reflector, resulting in inaccurate detection of the tracking target position and failure to track the target. In this paper, a tracking target robust to disturbance noise caused by other reflectors is developed by devising a retroreflective reflector shape. The tracking target consists of a retroreflective reflector as large as possible within the range that can be mounted on the robot and a non-reflective zone around the periphery. The robustness of the developed target was evaluated by target position measurement tests using large and small disturbance reflectors. The developed tracking target was mounted on a water cannon robot, and a tracking control test was conducted. We also confirmed that the hose extension robot followed the trajectory of the preceding robot equipped with the tracking target with an accuracy of approximately 0.7m.