Design and Biological Control of Snake-like Robots

The diverse locomotion modes and physiology of biological snakes make them supremely adapted for their environment. The special structure of snakes and their unique movement offer them peculiar ability of climbing and moving even in some ill-conditioned environments such as on the marshland or in narrow tubes. In this talk, I first give several designs of snake-like robots that can perform more efficient motions and then present control methods for these robots, mainly on the biological control method. Moreover, I would like to introduce some of our snake-related robots, including a shape-shifting mobile robot, a tracked reconfigurable modular robot, and a 3D snake-like robot with active crawlers.