Locomotion of a Snake-Like Robot on a Smooth 3D Surface based on Continuum Modeling

摘要

This paper discusses creeping locomotion of a snake-like robot on a three-dimensional (3D) terrain whose global profile is not known a priori. Due to the large number of degrees of freedom (DOFs), modeling and designing a controller have been hard work. In this paper, the control model is regarded as a continuum cord with zero thickness. Under the assumption that the every point of the body has contact with the terrain without sideslip, the equation of motion can be expressed in a simple form. Thanks to this simplicity, the optimal control can be obtained by solving an isoperimetric problem. It turns out that the solution has quite a simple form and is easy to implement on the snake robot which has hyper-redundant structure. The effectiveness and capability of 3D motion on a smooth surface is demonstrated through experimental system.