Kinematic gait synthesis for snake robots

Snake robots are highly articulated mechanisms that can perform a variety of motions that conventional robots cannot. Despite many demonstrated successes of snake robots, these mechanisms have not been able to achieve the agility displayed by their biological counterparts. We suggest that studying how biological snakes coordinate whole-body motion to achieve agile behaviors can help improve the performance of snake robots. The foundation of this work is based on the hypothesis that, for snake locomotion that is approximately kinematic, replaying parameterized shape trajectory data collected from biological snakes can generate equivalent motions in snake robots. To test this hypothesis, we collected shape trajectory data from sidewinder rattlesnakes executing a variety of different behaviors. We then analyze the shape trajectory data in a concise and meaningful way by using a new algorithm, called conditioned basis array factorization, which projects high-dimensional data arrays onto a...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2016
• Where: IJRR
• Authors: Chaohui Gong, Matthew J. Travers, Henry C. Astley, Lu Li, Joseph Mendelson, Daniel I. Goldman, Howie Choset
• Keywords: IJRR 2016