This study reports an autonomous fine dust source tracking system of a water spray robot for high-rise building demolition. The core function of this system is performing a self-controlled fine dust tracking of the endpoint of the excavator, which is the fine dust generation point. The water spray robot has a lift with a parallelogram-shaped linkage to lift the water spray drum to 10 m from the ground. The sensor network system is connected to the robot and the excavator to calculate the relative position of the water spray drum and excavator endpoint using forward kinematics. RTK-GPS is attached to the robot and the excavator to calculate the relative distance. By sensor network, forward kinematics, and RTK-GPS, the water spray robot can autonomously track fine dust generation point and spray water to the endpoint of the excavator. The experiment was conducted to confirm the accuracy of kinematics calculation and tracking performance of the robot. The first experiment showed that the calculation result of forward kinematics was accurate enough to fulfill tracking operations. The second experiment showed that the tracking accuracy was precise enough, meaning that the robot could autonomously track fine dust generation point.

In this study, a novel size adjustable robot that could overcome an unstructured environment was introduced. To provide the robot with a volume-modifiable function, negative Poisson’s ratio structure with a unique characteristic about deformation of material was applied to the design of the body frame. The robot could simultaneously adjust its width and length with only one directional control with the help of the negative Poisson’s ratio structure. An omni-directional mobile mechanism was adopted to drive its wheels and allow flexible movement in a narrow space. However, during the procedure to adjust the size of the robot, a slip phenomenon occurred, resulting in an unnecessary movement. To solve this problem, the unnecessary offset was measured through repetitive tests and applied to the robot to compensate the position shift. To verify the performance of the robot, a test bed with a narrow space was fabricated. Extensive experiments were conducted to evaluate environmental recognition and size adjustment function by calculating the width of the narrow space and scaling the robot"s body. Results confirmed that the robot sufficiently achieved the motion objective to move in a narrow space with its size adjustment function.