SIGMA: A Minimalistic 3D Hopping Robot with Parallel 3-RSR Mechanism for Safeguarding Humanitarian Demining

Humanitarian demining is a pressing task to safeguard the lives of civilians living near minefields and free up land occupied by landmines for development. Conventional demining robots, while capable of demining, have a high cost and can be damaged during demining. In this work, we propose SIGMA, a SIngle-leG Mine-clearing Assistant Robot, which is a lightweight and low-cost robotic tool that can complement conventional manual and robotic demining efforts. It is a hopping monopod robot based on a parallel spatial leg mechanism with the capability of omnidirectional movement and force. During the demining process, SIGMA can be deployed ahead of human or robotic deminers to trigger unstable mines and chart a safe path for traversing, reducing risks to deminers. A prototype of SIGMA is designed and built. Its capability to traverse and activate mines is also verified experimentally in simulated scenarios.