Improvement of Winding Gait for Snake Robot

Abstract

Abstract In order to solve the problem that the image information is difficult to handle due to the swing of the snake robot’s head during its serpentine locomotion, this paper improves the control function of the general winding gait for the orthogonal joint-connected snake-like robot, and the useful image information is obtained by reducing the swing of the camera-mounted snake’s head based on the improved function. Combining the Sigmoid function with the general function to control the rotation of the yaw joints and applying the Gaussian function to the pitch joints to lift the snake head off the ground, this new control function presented in this paper not only enables the joints to rotate smoothly, but also decreases the swing range of the snake head. Additionally, it can also fasten the robot’s movement. Experiments based on MATLAB and GAZEBO platform demonstrate the superiority and effectiveness of the improved winding gait.