Abstract
Recently, environmental issues are getting widespread international attention. Our group researched an environmental issue of a river by our university and we found many illegally-dumped empty-steel-can on the bottom of a river. In consequence, we developed a new robot (wheeled vehicle) to collect an empty-steel-can on the bottom of a river. The image from the front CCD camera put on the robot is displayed to the monitor of the remote control device, and the user points the location of an empty-steel-can (the four corners of the can) as a target object on the monitor by the mouse. The automatic directional control device was designed to solve the travel direction of a robot in accordance with the positions of the empty-steel-can in the image from the front CCD camera of a robot to catch the empty-steel-can which sinks into the bottom of a river. And the robot has the device for catching a empty can that is attached with a electromagnet. When the robot approached to the empty-steel-can, the robot moves the arm to catch the empty-steel-can and to put it in the BOX.
