Modular design of snake robot for various motions implementation

The paper presents a design concept of new modular snake robot for a variety of rhythmic motions implementation. The snake robot is designed so that it can realize various motions such as rectilinear, serpentine, concertina and side-winding motions as if real snake does. It is constructed by joining a number of similar modules and each module in the body has three degrees-of-freedom. The modules are joined by two revolute joints for side-wise rotation and up/down lifting of the robot body. In addition an active prismatic joint is provided inside each body module to achieve rectilinear motion along the body of snake robot. The modules do not have any hard-wired connection such that they are self-powered accompanied with wireless communication. The robot is also equipped with several sensors to observe the environment.