A Voxel-Enabled Robotic Assistant for Omnidirectional Conveyance

Conventional bidirectional conveyance platforms use a flat translating belt or a series of spinning wheels or rollers to apply a shear force to payloads to move them. Wheel/roller-based conveyors in particular cannot double as a worktop when idle, do not support collision-free multi-object manipulation by default, and are not optimized to move objects that are either slippery or pliable—let alone both. This paper introduces a Voxel-Enabled Robotic Assistant (VERA), a network of intelligent table "partitions" whose topologically dynamic worktops enable omnidirectional conveyance; each partition is composed of a 2D array of "quadrants," axisymmetric modules that can be hot-swapped for maintenance or repairs; each quadrant contains a 2D array of "cells," unitary robotic submodules; each cell houses an independently controllable "voxel," the motorized rotary element that conveys an overhead object. The efficacy of a VERA prototype was determined by evaluating waypoint error as a range of payloads were maneuvered between trajectory waypoints. By conveying both pliable and rigid payloads having slippery textures, the faceted voxels outperformed those augmented to mimic the circular-profiled wheels/rollers of competitor systems. VERA also successfully performed collision-free multi-object planar manipulations planned by its pathfinding algorithm. In light of these results, VERA emerges as a promising material handling platform for use in "Future of Work" settings as the need for multi-purpose collaborative industrial robots continues to grow.