A Study on the Mechanism and Locomotion Strategy for New Snake-Like Robot Active Cord Mechanism – Slime model 1 ACM-S1

Abstract

This paper presents ACM-S1 (Active Cord Mechanism - Slime model 1), a snake-like robot. Conventional snake-like robots have difficulty negotiation uneven ground. In this paper, we propose “a bending and expanding joint unit” which has three degrees of freedom (3DOF) in inchworm/angleworm-like motion and has been developed to solve this problem. The ACM-S1 we developed is composed of a series of these joint units. Experiments conducted to evaluate ACM-S1's performance demonstrate the effectiveness of inchworm motion over uneven ground and of angleworm motion over flat, smooth ground.