Introducing Polibot: A High Mobility Tracked Robot with Innovative Passive Suspensions

In the context of autonomous off-road mobility, tracked robots feature larger contact areas compared to equivalent wheeled vehicles, which turn into improved traction especially on soft terrains. This paper discusses a novel tracked robot, named Polibot, that is outfitted with passive articulated suspensions. The multibody model is developed within the MSC Adams environment leveraging on the Adams Tracked Vehicle (ATV) Toolkit. The different subsystems composing the vehicle assembly are outlined, with specific attention to the modeling strategies of the swing arms constituting the suspension system, as well as the characterization of the track belt and inertial properties. Efforts in validating the multibody twin against the real prototype are also presented, showing a good agreement in experiments performed on asphalt.