Biomechanical Study on Serpentine Locomotion

Abstract

The snake, in spite of its simple shape, can be considered to be a versatile robot having various functions. The authors are greatly intrigued by this fact, and believe that its biomechanical study will be instructive to design a new snake-like vehicle. This paper deals with the kinematical analysis of the serpentine movement of snakes, zoological experiments for verifying the theory, and a mechanical model produced for designing snake-like vehicles for use as a robot. (*) All fJgUres quoted in the text are at the end of the lecture P. Serafini et al., On Theory and Practice of Robots and Manipulators