In recent years, snake-inspired locomotion has garnered increasing interest in the bio-inspired robotics community. This positive trend is largely due to the unique and highly effective gaits utilized by snakes to traverse various terrains and obstacles. These gaits make use of a snake's hyper-redundant body structure to adapt to the terrain and maneuver through tight spaces. Snake-inspired robots utilizing rectilinear motion, one of the primary gaits observed in natural snakes, have demonstrated favorable results on various terrains. However, previous robot designs utilizing rectilinear gaits were slow in speed. This paper presents a design and an exaggerated rectilinear gait concept for a snake-inspired robot which overcomes this limitation. The robot concept incorporates high speed linear motion and a new multimaterial, variable friction force anchoring concept. A series of traction experiments are conducted to determine appropriate materials to be used in the friction anchor (FA) design. The gait concept includes four unique gaits: a forward and a turning gait, which both emphasize speed for the robot; and a forward and turning gait which emphasize traction. We also report a comparative study of the performance of prototype robot designed using these concepts to other published snake-inspired robot designs.
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May 2014
Research-Article
Design and Modeling of a New Drive System and Exaggerated Rectilinear-Gait for a Snake-Inspired Robot
James K. Hopkins,
James K. Hopkins
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Maryland
,College Park, MD 20742
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Satyandra K. Gupta
Satyandra K. Gupta
Department of Mechanical Engineering
and Institute for Systems Research,
e-mail: skgupta@umd.edu
and Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland
,College Park, MD 20742
e-mail: skgupta@umd.edu
Search for other works by this author on:
James K. Hopkins
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Maryland
,College Park, MD 20742
Satyandra K. Gupta
Department of Mechanical Engineering
and Institute for Systems Research,
e-mail: skgupta@umd.edu
and Institute for Systems Research,
University of Maryland
,College Park, MD 20742
e-mail: skgupta@umd.edu
Contributed by the Mechanisms and Robotics Committee of ASME for publication in the JOURNAL OF MECHANISMS AND ROBOTICS. Manuscript received September 12, 2012; final manuscript received October 15, 2013; published online January 3, 2014. Assoc. Editor: Vijay Kumar.
J. Mechanisms Robotics. May 2014, 6(2): 021001 (8 pages)
Published Online: January 3, 2014
Article history
Received:
September 12, 2012
Revision Received:
October 15, 2013
Citation
Hopkins, J. K., and Gupta, S. K. (January 3, 2014). "Design and Modeling of a New Drive System and Exaggerated Rectilinear-Gait for a Snake-Inspired Robot." ASME. J. Mechanisms Robotics. May 2014; 6(2): 021001. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4025750
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