A snake-like robot for variable friction unstructured terrains, pushing aside debris in clearing passages

Abstract

In this paper we design and implement a 2D coupled mobility snake/caterpillar vehicle for terrains with variable friction. A control hierarchy made of fuzzy logic controllers equipped with fuzzy actor critic learning (FACL) enables the robot to adapt itself to variable friction conditions of unknown, unstructured environments as well as the need for task changes in those environments such pushing aside a debris for its removal from the navigation site, during locomotion.