ARCSnake V2: An Amphibious Multi-Domain Screw-Propelled Snake-Like Robot

Robotic exploration in extreme environments such as caves, oceans, and planetary surfaces pose significant challenges, particularly in locomotion across diverse terrains. Conventional wheeled or legged robots often struggle in these contexts due to surface variability. This paper presents ARCSnake V2, an amphibious, screw propelled, snake like robot designed for teleoperated or autonomous locomotion across land, granular media, and aquatic environments. ARCSnake V2 combines the high mobility of hyper redundant snake robots with the terrain versatility of Archimedean screw propulsion. Key contributions include a water sealed mechanical design with serially linked screw and joint actuation, an integrated buoyancy control system, and teleoperation via a kinematically matched handheld controller. The robots design and control architecture enable multiple locomotion modes screwing, wheeling, and sidewinding with smooth transitions between them. Extensive experiments validate its underwater maneuverability, communication robustness, and force regulated actuation. These capabilities position ARCSnake V2 as a versatile platform for exploration, search and rescue, and environmental monitoring in multi domain settings.

Characterization and Evaluation of Screw-Based Locomotion Across Aquatic, Granular, and Transitional Media

Screw-based propulsion systems offer promising capabilities for amphibious mobility, yet face significant challenges in optimizing locomotion across water, granular materials, and transitional environments. This study presents a systematic investigation into the locomotion performance of various screw configurations in media such as dry sand, wet sand, saturated sand, and water. Through a principles-first approach to analyze screw performance, it was found that certain parameters are dominant in their impact on performance. Depending on the media, derived parameters inspired from optimizing heat sink design help categorize performance within the dominant design parameters. Our results provide specific insights into screw shell design and adaptive locomotion strategies to enhance the performance of screw-based propulsion systems for versatile amphibious applications.