Athena: An Autonomous Open-Hardware Tracked Rescue Robot Platform
🤖 AI Summary
This work proposes and implements an open-source tracked rescue robot platform to address limitations of ground robots in disaster response scenarios, particularly in obstacle traversal, payload capacity, and reconfigurability. The platform features a modular track system based on industrial polyurethane belts with toothed inserts, enabling rapid replacement. It is equipped with four independently controlled four-degree-of-freedom flipper arms that significantly enhance mobility over complex terrain. A 1.54-meter extendable manipulator arm is integrated for tasks such as opening doors and operating valves, while a low-cost, reliable remote emergency stop mechanism ensures operational safety. The entire hardware design—including CAD models and PCB layouts—and the underlying software stack are fully open-sourced, providing a reproducible and extensible foundation for research on heterogeneous rescue robotic systems.
Application Category
📝 Abstract
In disaster response and situation assessment, robots have great potential in reducing the risks to the safety and health of first responders. As the situations encountered and the required capabilities of the robots deployed in such missions differ wildly and are often not known in advance, heterogeneous fleets of robots are needed to cover a wide range of mission requirements. While UAVs can quickly survey the mission environment, their ability to carry heavy payloads such as sensors and manipulators is limited. UGVs can carry required payloads to assess and manipulate the mission environment, but need to be able to deal with difficult and unstructured terrain such as rubble and stairs. The ability of tracked platforms with articulated arms (flippers) to reconfigure their geometry makes them particularly effective for navigating challenging terrain. In this paper, we present Athena, an open-hardware rescue ground robot research platform with four individually reconfigurable flippers and a reliable low-cost remote emergency stop (E-Stop) solution. A novel mounting solution using an industrial PU belt and tooth inserts allows the replacement and testing of different track profiles. The manipulator with a maximum reach of 1.54m can be used to operate doors, valves, and other objects of interest. Full CAD & PCB files, as well as all low-level software, are released as open-source contributions.
Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
disaster response
unstructured terrain
rescue robot
tracked platform
heterogeneous robot fleets
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
reconfigurable flippers
open-hardware robot
tracked rescue platform
modular track system
remote emergency stop
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