Obstacle avoidance of a snake robot in narrow hallway

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a method of obstacle avoidance in narrow hallway for a snake robot which consists of rigid links, active joints and passive wheels. This type of snake robot can move with a periodic undulate gliding form. Therefore, if the gliding form can be tuned to an appropriate shape for width of the hallway, size or placement of the obstacle, the snake robot will pass through the hallway without any collisions with the obstacle or the side walls. In our method, motion of the snake robot is restricted to some kind of a serpenoid curve which is like a trace of natural snake, and the serpenoid curve is tuned to avoid contact between the body and the obstacle or the walls. In this paper, we denote the detail of our method and investigate the effectiveness of our method by numerical simulations.