In this paper we describe the mechanical design, gait and control for a modular hexapod robot which makes it compliant to terrain while climbing slopes up and down. The robot uses a unique electronically actuated 2DOF universal spine similar to the spine of the Snake and the four legged animals like leopard, tiger etc.By controlling the amount of stiffness of the spine we were able to make the ...

Environment in which human being works has spread in the various directions by development of technology in recent years. In many cases, such field is accompanied with danger, then the necessity for work robots in such space is increased. Furthermore, the multi functional robot which can do many tasks is desirable in such environment. Therefore, development of the robot which has redundancy was...

\follow" the lead of the three-segment kinematic system. By formulating the motion of the system in terms of a connection, we can clearly highlight the important factors which contribute to the serpentine locomotion. Using sinusoidal inputs which are phase-delayed down the length of the snake robot, we were able to simulate various possible gaits, including a serpentine gait characterized by ne...

This paper considers the problem of path following control of a planar snake robot without sideslip constraints. We use Lagrangian mechanics to derive the dynamical equations of motion of the system. The possibility of controlling the orientation of the robot in the absence of external dissipative forces is investigated. An exponentially stabilizing joint control law for the actuated shape dyna...

Central Pattern Generators (CPGs) have become a popular solution for robot’s locomotion control, in particular for snake-like robots. CPGs based on coupled nonlinear oscillators can be integrated with a sensory feedback to adapt the robot’s locomotion to the environment or to achieve the desired dynamic characteristics of the movement. In this paper we present an adaptive head stabilisation sys...

This paper presents the kinematics of a planar multibody vehicle which is aimed at the exploration, data collection, non-destructive testing and general autonomous navigation and operations in confined environments such as pipelines. The robot is made of several identical modules hinged by passive revolute joints. Every module is actuated with four active revolute joints and can be regarded as ...

In this thesis work a policy improvement algorithm called Policy Improvement with Path Integrals (PI2) is used to generate goal-directed locomotion of a complex snake-like robot with screw-drive units. PI2 is numerically simple and has an ability to deal with high dimensional systems. Here, PI2 is used to find proper locomotion control parameters, like joint angles and screw-drive unit velociti...

Underwater snake robots offer many interesting capabilities for underwater operations. The long and slender structure of such robots provide superior capabilities for access through narrow openings and within confined areas. This is interesting for inspection and monitoring operations, for instance within the subsea oil and gas industry and within marine archeology. In addition, underwater snak...