Design and control of a snake robot according to snake anatomy

Serpentine robots are multi-segmented vehicles. Based on their physical structure and design, these robots could have great mobility in their movements. This mobility can enable the robot to move around in more complex environments. The application of these kind of robots could be very useful in hard to reach places or hazardous environments. In this paper we investigated and implemented a serpentine robot. Inspired from snake motion, we implemented the structure of our robot based on the snakepsilas physical mechanism. In spite of most designed snake robots, our robot makes use of the friction between the body of the robot and the environment it encompasses to move in. This kind of movement requires a considerable amount of accuracy and synchronization among all segments. For this purpose we utilized a master and slave routine. The master is located in the head of the snake and is able to change each of the slaves status located in every segment of the snake according to the snakepsilas controlling algorithm and the feedback signals received from each slave unit. The communications to these segments are accomplished by the serial interface of the micro-controllers located in each segment. The joints between each neighboring segment are constructed of an elastic rubber and a cord, similar to the body structure of a real snake. The relative movements of the neighboring segments are the result of the wrapping and unwrapping of this cord. Utilizing this cord system, we obtained 3-degree-of freedom joints which enable the snake to move in any desired direction.