Snake-like locomotion: Experimentations with a biologically inspired wheel-less snake robot

This paper presents the results of an experimental study on limbless snake-like locomotion. The experimental plate-form consists of a 9-DOF wheel-less snake-like robot and an appropriate artifical environment. The wheel-less snake-like mechanism has a planar structure and is mainly dedicated to move through lateral undulation, the most common limbless locomotion type observed in natural snakes. The mechanical design, trajectory generation and control method have been biologically inspired. With the closed-loop control, the artifical mechanism has succeeded in applying the natural principles of lateral undulation in an autonomous manner excepting for the power supply. Another limbless locomotion type has also been experimented with the same mechanism. (c) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.