Maneuvering Control of Planar Snake Robots Using Virtual Holonomic Constraints

This paper investigates the problem of maneuvering control for planar snake robots. The control objective is to make the center of mass of the snake robot converge to a desired path and traverse the path with a desired velocity. The proposed feedback control strategy enforces virtual constraints encoding a lateral undulatory gait, parametrized by the states of dynamic compensators used to regulate the orientation and forward speed of the snake robot.