RI: Small: Vine-Like Continuum Robots

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The investigators are conducting fundamental research focused on the synthesis of a series of novel "vine-like" robots. Vines are found throughout the natural (and human-made) world. They have unique capabilities allowing them to adapt to congested spaces and/or irregular terrain, significant voids, and unpredictable dynamic environmental interactions. Robots emulating the capabilities of vines can extend the reach (literally and figuratively) of robotics into previously inaccessible domains and applications. This offers new and useful solutions across a wide range of endeavors important to society, including persistent environmental monitoring, field archaeology, medical procedures, and urban disaster relief.Exploiting their combined expertise in continuum robots and biological vines, the PIs are collaboratively designing, modeling, creating, and demonstrating a series of innovative vine-like continuum robots. Coordinated basic research in the laboratory at Clemson and the greenhouse at Cornell is providing inspiration from biology for the vine-like robots, and returning insight from engineering to biology regarding open questions on mechanisms governing biological vines. The key innovations in robot hardware, representing a significant new direction in continuum robotics, are enabling unprecedented workspace reach via augmentation with passive and active appendages (artificial thorns/tendrils), and creating the ability to "branch" into new continuum "growth". The novel navigation and manipulation capabilities enabled by these hardware innovations are providing both new theoretical insight and innovative operational modes for robots. The overall results are pushing the range of access of robots to a new level, currently beyond the reach of the field.