Design of an autonomous antarctic exploration platforms through manipulations of All-Terrain Vehicles

In Antarctica, there exists many crevasses which can be greatest risks to Antarctica exploration crew. In order to protect the scientists from these hazards, a robotic platform is being developed which can detect dangerous crevasses hidden below the surface. This paper presents such an effort to develop an unmanned vehicle by modifying a commercially available All Terrain Vehicle (ATV). The developed platform be driven autonomously given the user provided GPS trajectories in a harsh Antarctic environments. In order to provide such capabilities, several manipulators are designed on the throttle, break, steering wheel and gears of the ATV, each controlled by embedded motor drivers. The command to motor drivers are generated from the embedded controllers which can communicate wirelessly to either user command station or handheld remote controllers. This redundancy in the user input can enhance safety in an emergency situation. The developed platform is tested in many different experimental scenarios similar to the Antarctic exploration.