Snake Robotics: Bionic Mechanism, Structure, Actuation, Modeling and Control

Abstract

The snake robot is a new type of bionic robot that can imitate the movement of a biological snake, which is called "the most realistic robot" by the international robotics industry because it can achieve "limbless movement" like a living creature. The research involves the cross-fertilization of materials science, bionics, mechanical design, and manufacturing, sensing technology and other disciplines, and has broad application prospects in firefighting, post-disaster rescue, undersea environment and pipeline detection, complex environment operation, military reconnaissance, and other fields, and has received extensive attention and research from scholars and institutions at home and abroad. The research on snake robots is reviewed in terms of biological characteristics of snakes, bionic principles, structural drive, modeling, and control. According to the structure type, snake robots are classified into passive wheel type, active wheel type, crawler type, propeller type and other structures; snake robots are classified into DC motor drive, fluid drive, hybrid drive and other drives according to the drive mode; and the modeling methods and control strategies commonly used for snake robots at present and control strategies. The key research of snake robots include material upgrading, structure optimization, flexible sensing technology and adaptive control, and their future development directions include new material preparation and molding, efficient structure design and processing, sensitive and flexible sensing technology, new modeling methods suitable for large deformation, and adaptive control system development.