A Multi-Vine Soft Robot Enabling Accessible Working Channel and Steering

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2609.03758v1
• Date: Thu, 03 Sep 2026 12:26:59 GMT
• Title: A Multi-Vine Soft Robot Enabling Accessible Working Channel and Steering
• Abstract summary: A vine robot consists of a thin, flexible, inextensible tube folded inward that everts and grows forward when pressurized.<n>This tip-growth enables navigation with minimal friction, making vine robots well suited for complex environments such as the human colon.<n>We propose a multi-vine architecture in which two vine robots are coupled to an externally integrated working channel via soft mounting tips.
• Score: 3.744611330241908
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Soft eversion robots, also known as vine robots, have attracted growing interest for navigation and inspection tasks, including minimally invasive medical applications [1]. A vine robot consists of a thin, flexible, inextensible tube folded inward that everts and grows forward when pressurized. This tip-growth enables navigation with minimal friction, making vine robots well suited for complex environments such as the human colon [2]. While their inherent softness allows passive conforma- tion to curved pathways in confined spaces, navigation performance strongly depends on environmental inter- actions, including contact angle and the length of un- constrained deployed material [3], [4]. Sharp directional changes, such as those in the sigmoid colon, often limit passive growth and necessitate active steering. Existing solutions include distributed artificial muscles [5] or dedicated tip-based steering mechanisms [6]. In addition, many applications require payload delivery, such as sensors and tools [7], [8]. Within the ERC Synergy project EndoTheranostics, this motivates the development of vine robots capable of delivering micro- surgical tools during growth. Prior work has integrated working channels within the vine body [8], [9], but these approaches constrain tool size, introduce friction, and limit access to the environment to the robot tip. In this work, we propose a multi-vine architecture in which two vine robots are coupled to an externally integrated working channel via soft mounting tips [10]. Independent vine actuation enables active tip steering while advancing the working channel without embed- ding it within the vine bodies Figure 1. Experiments demonstrate sharp steering of nearly 90 degrees during growth, highlighting the potential of this architecture for versatile medical and non-medical applications.

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