Compact, lightweight transport apparatus for use particularly in hostile environments employs a plurality of groups of rails flexurally mounted to a base and corresponding groups of slats flexurally mounted to the rails and forming a slat array. Corresponding groups of slats and rails are reciprocated out of phase so that the slat group orbits relative to the base along an orbital path. The different slat-rail groups are also reciprocated out of phase with one another so that an object placed on the slat array is advanced incrementally along the slat array in a very gentle fashion.
