Unmanned Cooperative Fire-Seeking and -Fighting Robot with Bluetooth Communication and Stair-Climbing Capability

This thesis presents a prototype of Unmanned Cooperative Fire-Seeking and -Fighting Robots (UCSFRs) which have a new way to climb up the stairs or traverse over obstacles with a ball screw. There are three unmanned vehicles (one Mother Vehicle (MV) and two Daughter Vehicles (DVs)) presented in this research. The MV can carry two DVs to climb stairs. They can communicate with each other using Bluetooth communication modules. The core system of the UCSFRs is a PIC 16F877 microcontroller on a 2840 development board. The software is written in C language and the interface is established through Hyper Terminal built in Windows XP. UCSFRs are low cost unmanned vehicles compared with other commercial ones. The double-deck structure is applied on the DVs. The body of the MV can be extended for special purposes. In this research, there are three tests used to verify the functionality of the UCSFRs: (1) MV?s finding and stopping fire, (2) Communication between the MV and the DVs, and (3) the MV?s climbing stairs. In the second test, the DVs run in the opposite direction to assist MV detect fire. By cooperative work, they can save time finding the fire. The MV will go to the hightemperature area according to the data sent by the DVs. Because of the features mentioned above, UCSFRs can be used to perform dangerous tasks instead of fire-fighters.