Motion control and implementation of a snake robot with inactive wheels

Snake-like robot is a stimulating example of nonlinear and nonholonomic system for its versatile locomotive behavior and complicated controllability structure. In this paper, we present design and motion control of a mechanical snake robot which has been built in Mechatronics Lab of the School of Mechanical Engineering at the UT. It is constructed of a series of articulated links and one servo-motor between each pair of articulates. This structure allows the body configuration to be easily controlled thereby, enabling the robot to move in a variety of environments. At first we give a kinematic and a dynamic model of the robot and then as main purpose of the paper we design a controller for the fabricated snake robot in our laboratory. Optical sensors provide feedback for controller and closed-loop system navigates the robot to a luminous goal. The controller is a proportional one, and the results have been validated through experiments.