Design and improved serpentine curve locomotion control of a planar modular snake robot

This paper presents a design of planar snake robot which consists of bottom-wheeled modular parts chained with servo actuator joints. Serpentine curve locomotion is recognized as the most efficient gait for snake robots control in terms of motor torques and friction forces. However, the traditional serpentine control model is based on fixed parameters. There is a slipping problem when snake robots change the shape. Changing parameters to implement a given manoeuvring motion causes the chained modular parts to slip. The improved serpentine curve equations are proposed here attaching a new angular parameter to compensate the slipping. So the manoeuvring motion of snake robots remains optimal even when the parameters changed. Both simulation and experiments show that the new angular parameter can effectively compensate the deviation caused by slipping. The results also show the efficiency of applying this method to the designed snake robot.