Project THOR is being developed by two finalist students of Electrical and Computer Engineering , of Instituto Superior Técnico, in the scope of graduation work.  This page’s objective is to inform of the accomplishments achieved.

The project’s main objective is to develop a robot capable of acquiring data, generate and plan trajectories, in order to obtain autonomous navigation in typical indoor scenarios. Although the idea is to demonstrate the concept introduced by this new locomotion architecture, application for this platform spread through several areas, from active surveillance to assisting in transporting materials. The richness and complexity of this project covers several of the subjects studied during the course, leading to work on several layers: building an operational structure, developing hardware/software for control and communication via radio and optimizing high level algorithms for navigation and sensing the surrounding environment.

The developed prototype, named Terrestrial Hybrid Operational Robot (THOR) is an autonomous robot, capable of switching between two distinct modes of locomotion. Combined, these two modes permit navigation in minimally structured environments, where obstacles can be grouped in three classes: steps, ramps and smooth surfaces.

 

The robot’s name originated from his resemblance to a hammer.

In fact, THOR is the Thunder God from north mythology, son of Odin, whose weapon was a “magic hammer” that released mighty thunders and returned to the owner’s hand after being thrown.