Gait design of a snake robot by connecting simple shapes

Abstract

This paper presents a method for expressing the target form of a snake robot by connecting simple shapes. Because the characteristics of each combined shapes are clear, we can intuitively design the target form and fit a snake robot to this form. In addition, we propose two novel gaits for the snake robot as a design example of the proposed method. The first gait is for pipe climbing to move over a flange on the pipe, while the other is the “Crawler-Gait” aimed at moving at high speed over uneven terrain. We demonstrate the effectiveness of each gait on a pipe, step, and set of stairs in a physical simulation.