A hybrid model of obstacle-aided snake robot locomotion
Original version
Proceedings / IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation 2010:675-682 10.1109/ROBOT.2010.5509834Abstract
A snake can traverse cluttered and irregular environments by using irregularities around its body as push-points to aid the propulsion. This characteristic feature of biological snake locomotion, denoted obstacle-aided locomotion, is investigated for snake robot locomotion purposes in this paper. The paper presents a hybrid model of the dynamics of a planar snake robot interacting with obstacles in its environment. Obstacle contact forces are calculated by formulating and solving a linear complementarity problem (LCP). The existence and uniqueness properties of the state evolution of the hybrid model are investigated. Simulation results validate the hybrid modelling approach.