Magnetic Brake Cylinder to Enhance Traverse Ability and Its Application to Rescue Robots

In this paper, a novel pneumatic cylinder is proposed, named Magnetic Brake Cylinder. It is composed of a tank, a pneumatic cylinder, and a permanent magnet, and with this, the piston is held by the attractive force of the magnet until the pressure inside the tank is very high, offering a higher driving power than an ordinary cylinder when using the same pressure source. In addition, a control method of its driving power is introduced. The developed actuator is then mounted into two types of rescue inspectors: a rolling and jumping rescue robot, which uses a cylinder to jump over obstacles, and a throw and collect rescue inspector, which deploys with the cylinder a child machine over high obstacles. Both developed prototypes showed higher jumping and throwing height than when using an ordinary cylinder, proving to be an option of effective enhancement of traversing ability for pneumatically powered robots.