Transport and Delivery of Objects with a Soft Everting Robot

TL;DR

This paper explores how soft everting robots can be used to transport and deploy various payloads, demonstrating their capabilities in complex terrains and with payloads up to 1.5kg, highlighting their potential for hazardous environment applications.

Contribution

It introduces models and experimental validation for payload deployment and transport using soft everting robots, expanding their functional capabilities beyond exploration.

Findings

Transported payloads up to 1.5kg in weight.

Moved through apertures with 0.01cm clearance.

Carried out discrete turns up to 135 degrees.

Abstract

Soft everting robots present significant advantages over traditional rigid robots, including enhanced dexterity, improved environmental interaction, and safe navigation in unpredictable environments. While soft everting robots have been widely demonstrated for exploration type tasks, their potential to move and deploy payloads in such tasks has been less investigated, with previous work focusing on sensors and tools for the robot. Leveraging the navigation capabilities, and deployed body, of the soft everting robot to deliver payloads in hazardous areas, e.g. carrying a water bottle to a person stuck under debris, would represent a significant capability in many applications. In this work, we present an analysis of how soft everting robots can be used to deploy larger, heavier payloads through the inside of the robot. We analyze both what objects can be deployed and what terrain features they can be carried through. Building on existing models, we present methods to quantify the effects of payloads on robot growth and self-support, and develop a model to predict payload slip. We then experimentally quantify payload transport using soft everting robot with a variety of payload shapes, sizes, and weights and though a series of tasks: steering, vertical transport, movement through holes, and movement across gaps. Overall, the results show that we can transport payloads in a variety of shapes and up to 1.5kg in weight and that we can move through circular apertures with as little as 0.01cm clearance around payloads, carry out discrete turns up to 135 degrees, and move across unsupported gaps of 1.15m in length.