AIDR / ARF: Arachnobot Independent Disaster Response System with Autonomous Rescue Flotation

AIDR (Arachnobot Independent Disaster Response System) is an open concept architecture for a family of nested, multi-environment rescue robots that extend the reach of human responders into floods, collapses, wildfires, and other places too dangerous or inaccessible to enter. Larger platforms carry smaller specialist units, and every unit stays under human incident command. The paper covers orientation-agnostic multi-legged mobility; ARF (Autonomous Rescue Flotation), a passive-safe flotation device that can be built and tested on its own; a heavy rescue platform (Juggernaut); embedded response nodes for bridges and roadways; bounded autonomy with explicit human authority; and a staged development path benchmarked against NIST/ASTM response-robot test methods. This is a concept paper, not an engineering specification or field-use procedure. Released under CC BY 4.0: free to use, adapt, and build upon with credit to Daniel Duke.