Stabilization of the head of an undulating snake-like robot

In this paper, we discuss about stabilization of the head of a snake-like robot. In prior research snake-like robots usually shook the head during undulating motion. However, a snake-like robot is usually equipped with a camera on the head, so the swing of the head is problem. To solve this problem, we propose a control method to stabilize the head of an undulating snake-like robot. In the proposed method, the motion of the neck is controlled to cancel the undulation of the body in order to stabilize the head. In this study, first we derived the formulas for this method, and confirmed the effectiveness by simulation. Then we implemented that control on a real snake-like robot and showed the availability of the proposed method.