Snake-like robot with fusion gait for high environmental adaptability: Design, modeling, and experiment

Abstract

A snake changes its gait to adapt to different environments. A snake-like robot that is able to perform as many or more gaits than a real-life snake has the potential to successfully adapt to a range of environments, similar to a real-life snake. However, only a few mechanisms in the current snake-like framework can perform common gaits. In this paper, a novel snake-like robot is developed to resolve this problem. A multi-gait is established and used as a reference for the articulation design. A non-snake-like mechanism with linear articulation is combined with the classical swing joint. A prototype is designed and constructed for verification and analysis. Two basic main gaits, namely, serpentine and rectilinear locomotion, are fused, and a novel obstacle-aided locomotion based on rectilinear motion is developed. The experiment demonstrates that the robot can generate all of the expected gaits with high movement efficiency.