Bio-inspired locomotion for a modular snake robot

Abstract

Inspired by the snake locomotion, modular snake robots have different locomotion capabilities by coordinating their internal degrees of freedom. They have the potential to access restricted spaces where humans cannot go. They can also traverse rough terrains while conventional wheeled and legged robots cannot. Modular robots have other features including versatility, robustness, low-cost, and fast-prototyping. We have built our first prototype that costs less than $200. In this paper, we describe the electronics architecture of our prototyped robot, and present a model for the locomotion of pitch-yaw snake robots that allows them to perform different gaits. Each mode of the robot is controlled by a sinusoidal oscillator with four parameters: amplitude, frequency, phase, and offset. We show the parameters that achieve snake-like locomotion.