Active modification of the environment by a robot with construction abilities

Field robots are widely used to accomplish a variety of tasks in many different fields. However, setting of the locomotive ability of these robots at the design phase may prevent the traversal of unknown rough terrain. To address this shortcoming of existing robots, we designed a robot that is able to modify its environment by using polyurethane foam to construct auxiliary structures to facilitate movement across previously impassable terrain. Two robots were implemented with the ability to eject one- and two-part polyurethane foam, respectively. First, we investigated the specifications of the different types of polyurethane foam, specifically the volume expansion and curing time thereof. Two-part polyurethane foam cures in approximately 2 min, compared with 1 h for the one-part foam, but requires more accurate spraying, and its vertical expansion needs to be considered for accurate construction of auxiliary structures. The performance of each robot was tested in two experiments in the field. The first involved filling a deep ditch before crossing over it, while in the second experiment, each robot constructed a slope leading up to a high step, allowing the robot to move onto the step. Both robots succeeded in completing these tasks successfully, with the main difference in performance being the time taken before the robot was able to traverse the obstacles. Using two-part polyurethane foam resulted in much shorter curing times, although the structures constructed were not as even as those for the one-part polyurethane foam, and the robot needed to wait 10 s between the applications of each successive layer of foam to account for the vertical expansion of the material. Our findings demonstrate the effectiveness of our polyurethane foam construction robots in overcoming obstacles in unknown rough terrain.