Trajectory tracking of a planar snake robot using camera feedback

Most of the research conducted on snake robots has been on movement, control or dynamics. In this paper we discuss the motion control which accomplishes the trajectory tracking of a fabricated snake robot in Mechatronics Lab of the UT. The robot has 9 articulated links and between each pair of articulates is a servo-motor. These servos create a motion cycle that is similar to serpenoid curve. In this paper, first we give a mathematical modeling of the snake robot that describes joints angular velocities according to the head's velocity, based on the whole body configuration. Second we control the robot using camera feedback i.e. the camera provides feedback for the controller with detecting the location of the robot. The camera is connected to a PC and the PC processes the video to determine the location of the robot and then the controller commands the snake for tacking a specified path wirelessly.