Hazardous Materials Handling Robot Operator Control Panels

The use of robotics in situations involving hazardous materials can significantly reduce the risk of human injury. The Emergency Response Robotics Project is developing a teleoperated mobile robot allowing HAZMAT (hazardous materials) teams to remotely respond to incidents involving hazardous materials. The current robot, called HAZBOT III, can assist in locating, characterizing, identifying, and mitigating hazardous material incidents without risking entry team personnel.

Rather than developing a system from scratch, the project procured commercially available robots from REMOTEC (Oak Ridge, TN). Training and experimentation by the JPL Fire Department HAZMAT Team with these commercial robots identified several modifications to improve performance. One of the most important was the redesign of the operator control panel. The control panel supplied with the system, shown in the bottom of the image, used an array of simple toggle switches to a ctuate a joint in the robot manipulator. For example, one switch was labeled elbow up/down. This type of control was very difficult for the trainees to master because whether or not the elbow joint caused the forearm of the manipulator to move up or down was dependent on the current position or configuration of the manipulator. This type of control therefore led to many mistakes during operation of the manipulator.

A new control panel was constructed that used a simple side view graphic of the robot with controls for each joint placed at the corresponding point of the drawing as shown in the top of the image above. The toggle switches were replaced with spring loaded potentiometers; for instance, rotation of the elbow potentiometer clockwise caused the elbow joint to also rotate clockwise. This system was found much more intuitive for the HAZMAT team personnel and led to far fewer mistakes during manipulation tasks. The control panel redesign has been successfully transferred back to REMOTEC and is being used as a prototype for their new control panels. We have kept REMOTEC up to date on other modifications to the system and are identifying what other technology can be transferred to REMOTEC for use in their commercial systems.

For further information see:

"Applying Robotics to HAZMAT," by R. Welch and G. Edmonds, Procee dings of the Forth National Technology Transfer Conference - NASA Technology 2003 , Vol. 2, pp 279-287, Anaheim, CA, December 1993.

Point of Contact:
G. Edmonds
Mail Stop 281-103
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA 91109
818-354-3729
Gary.O.Edmonds@jpl.nasa.gov

R. Welch
Mail Stop 107-
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
4800 Oak Grove Drive
Pasadena, CA 91109
818-354-0590
welch@telerobotics.jpl.nasa.gov

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Last updated: May 10, 1996