Petrobras · working robot
Chico Mendes hybrid environmental robot
Chico
A semi-autonomous amphibious robot with big wheels that drives over sand, mud and flooded ground and can float. It carries gas, water-quality and depth sensors plus a small arm, and runs on batteries topped up by solar panels.
- Price
- —Not published
- Height
- 105 cmTaller than 57%
- Weight
- 150 kgHeavier than 67%
- Payload
- —Not published
- Speed
- 5.0 km/hFaster than 50%
- Battery
- —Not published
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Why it matters
An amphibious wheeled robot built to watch over pipelines in flooded Amazon terrain that boats and people struggle to reach.
Real-world use
Petrobras internal use; trials on the Solimões and Amazon rivers
Timeline
- First shown
- 2008
- Released
- Not yet
Maker
PetrobrasCompany · Rio de Janeiro, BrazilHow it stacks up
Against other working & field robots that publish the figure. Pick a measure.
Chico Mendes hybrid environmental robot (Chico) is taller than 57% of the 72 other working & field robots that publish a height. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Chico Mendes hybrid environmental robot (Chico) is heavier than 67% of the 75 other working & field robots that publish a weight. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Chico Mendes hybrid environmental robot (Chico) is faster than 50% of the 86 other working & field robots that publish a speed. Bars show the 7 closest in date.
Not published by the maker: payload, joints, battery, price.
Public attention
A historic robot: no longer sold or in use, so it is not ranked against current machines.
- No Wikipedia article of its own yet
- No recent press stories listed yet
Measures how much people read and write about a robot, not how good it is. Measured 2026-10-14; same method for every robot. How it is measured
What’s inside
The parts the company has talked about publicly.
- Movement
- Wheeled base
- How it runs
- Assisted. Operators drove it by radio while its onboard computer adjusted the wheel-leg traction and suspension to the ground.
- Actuators & motors
- DC motors driving reconfigurable wheel-legs; amphibious.
- Hands
- 3-DoF manipulator arm.
- Sensors & vision
- Explosimeter for methane and flammable gas, water-quality and depth sensors, GPS, IMU, infrared obstacle sensors.
- Compute
- PC/104 board with a 500 MHz CPU.
- Battery & power
- Battery plus solar array.
- Materials & build
- Aluminium, acrylic, fibreglass and thermoplastics.
- AI & software
- Linux; semi-autonomous or operator control.
- Other details
- About 150 kg; 5 km/h. Built to monitor oil pipelines in the Amazon.
From the maker
Chico Mendes hybrid environmental robot (Chico) is the only machine from Petrobras in the atlas.
Made, sold and where
Unit counts are usually company figures; analysts often disagree.
- Price
- Not published
- How to get one
- No official buying page found
- Built
- Research prototypes (a smaller version also built)
- Sold or delivered
- not sold
- Where it is sold or used
- Petrobras R&D centre, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Customers and pilots
- Petrobras internal use; trials on the Solimões and Amazon rivers
Sources
Figures come from press coverage. Every link below backs something on this page.
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