Enabling Autonomous Locomotion into Sand - A Mobile and Modular Drilling Robot

Established robots for locomotion into sandy soil are dominated by hammering systems. In this paper, we study an alternative design using a screw-driven mechanism. A testbed to find an efficient design is developed. Dependencies between velocity, drilling torque and depth are measured for different screw prototypes. The results show that the design of the screw is critical for the creation of fast and efficient mobile robots. Based on the experimental results, a prototype of an autonomous drilling robot is designed. With a torque of 0.66 Nm it is able to reach a depth of 20 cm within 2 min.