Session: 07-11-01 Mobile Robots and Unmanned Ground Vehicles I

Paper Number: 67555

Start Time: Tuesday, 01:00 PM

67555 - Driving System Design and Control of Tick Collection Robot 

This paper discusses the design and control of the driving system of a modern robot that is used to catch and collect ticks in a variety of rough terrains and remote areas. Using robots offers a new solution to the collection of insects utilizing a robot equipped with a vision system, GPS, and tick collection mechanisms for US Army medical researchers or biologists. A robotic solution to tick collection protects humans from a potential illness from bugs and insects carrying disease pathogens, injury from traveling across rough ground, and harm due to exposure to the elements.

Ticks are microscopic parasites that are bloodsucking and spread diseases to animals and humans. At least 16 tick-transmitted pathogens infect humans in the present study [1]. Most medical trials and environmental surveys need to safely capture ticks for study. Human collection and carbon dioxide trapping are commonly used to capture ticks with the currently used techniques. Flagging brings across a sampling area a big square of a white flag in the expectation that ticks would cling to the flag as if it were a host, encouraging the ticks to be collected [2]. This approach is labor-intensive considering the need of producing an adequate sample, which may frequently require multiple hours of picking. And it increases the collector's own chance of pollution, and the work is potentially unsafe for the workers involved. In selection, trapping can also be used. Trapping is used to capture ticks by using an attractant material, typically dry ice, as a source of CO2. The ticks will congregate on or in the trapping system allowing for relatively quick, secure, and simple selection. But the positioning of the traps is unchanged, and their effective range is limited. Moreover, it is not always successful for all tick species because of variations in tick hunting activity as well as their specific CO2 susceptibility.

To solve the above-mentioned issues, a robot is designed for the tick collection purpose. The robot can carry the flag mechanisms and trapping mechanisms and travels on diverse terrains, such as soft turf, gravel, wet soil, and rocky soil to collect ticks. The robotic method would alter the manner or the way that the insects are being collected for scientific research from human manual labor to automation. The success of the project would have the potential to apply to other insect research areas as well.

This paper will address the robot driving system design and control, including the coding logics based on ROS, and simulation of the robot in different terrain settings.

Presenting Author: Yesiliang Qiu University of Cincinnati

Authors:

Yesiliang Qiu University of Cincinnati
Janet Dong University of Cincinnati
Caroline “Niki” Harrison Moretto University of Cincinnati