The OmniTread OT-4 Serpentine Robot for Emergencies and Hazardous Environments

Serpentine robots are slender, multisegmented vehicles designed to provide greater mobility than conventional wheeled or tracked robots. Serpentine robots are thus ideally suited for urban search and rescue as well as for surveillance and inspection tasks in hazardous and hard-to-reach environments. One such serpentine robot, currently under development at the University of Michigan, is the “OmniTread OT-4.” The OT-4 comprises seven segments, which are linked to each other by 2-degree-of-freedom joints. Moving tracks on all four sides of each segment assure propulsion even when the vehicle rolls over. The OT-4 is designed to climb over obstacles that are much higher than the robot itself, propel itself inside pipes of different diameters, and traverse even the most difficult terrain, such as rocks or the rubble of a collapsed structure. The foremost and unique design characteristic of the OT-4 is the use of pneumatic bellows to actuate the joints. The pneumatic bellows allow the simultaneous control of position and stiffness for each joint. Controllable stiffness is of crucial importance in serpentine robots, which require stiff joints to cross gaps and compliant joints to conform to rough terrain for effective propulsion. Another unique feature of the OmniTread design is the maximal coverage of all four sides of each segment with driven tracks. This design makes the robot indifferent to roll-overs, which are bound to happen when the slender bodies of serpentine robots travel over rugged terrain. This paper describes the OmniTread concept and some of its technical features in some detail. In the Experiment Results Section, photographs of successful obstacle traverses illustrate the abilities of the OT-4.