Smart Life-Saving System: Design of the Body and of the Mechanical Subsystems

The present work is focused on specific aspects of the study and design of a robotized unmanned life-saving system to be employed as recovery tool in water-related disaster areas. Since this idea was first proposed in the framework of the Alta Scuola Politecnica, context in which the preliminary analyses were conducted, and since the whole project has been developed not just by the author of this thesis, but also by Erika Vaniglia, the present work deals with specific parts of the entire research and design scenario and it is complementary to Erika Vaniglia’s one. References to her work are present in each side of the work dealing with results taken from it. The contribution of this thesis to the overall project can be divided in four parts: • 1. Organic analysis of the existent technologies and patents in the field of unmanned vehicles and life-saving water devices. • 2. Generation of a feasible configuration of the system, on the basis of the technical specifications indicated by Erika Vaniglia’s work. • 3. Deep analyses of pros and cons of every generated design, ended with the choice of the best one on the basis of technical and economical parameters. • 4. Detailed design of the body of the device and of its mechanical subsystems. Dealing with the first point, the analysis of the state of the art has been conducted with a rigorous methodology, aiming to investigate both the concepts which have already been built up in the world and the ones that have just been studied, in order to take the best from each of them and to develop the most complete and smart possible system. The sources have been the internet, books and the most important patent websites. About the second point, the target of the author was not the one of creating multiple solutions to the problem, but calculations made on a certain configuration can bring to ascertain that some critical issues can be corrected with a re-design of the concept, not just with incremental modifications. Once reached this point, the author decided not to go on with the analysis of the previous configuration, but to start with the study of the new one. This way, a broader field of technological solutions have been taken into account and no design has been analyzed with too high detail, with the risk of loosing time on “possibly-wrong” configurations. After a full spectrum of designs was generated, a trade-off has been made on the basis of parameters which were chosen as important by the author, related to the specifications exposed in Erika Vaniglia’s work. Finally, the design of the body and of the mechanical subsystem has been conducted with the target of building a prototype, so each action was performed to reach a simple, functional and not too expensive system. Actually, putting together the part developed by the author of the current thesis and the one developed by Erika Vaniglia in her work about the propulsion system, all the pieces of information needed to build a prototype are given. The aim of the overall project and of this work, which is one of the two complementary parts of it, has thus been reached.