Construction and operation of a snake-like robot

Abstract

Our robot, called the GMD-Snake, uses its body instead of wheels, legs, or arms for locomotion as well as for handling items. It may be used for inspection and manipulation in areas where motion is restricted. We describe the hardware and software of the GMD-Snake and some locomotion experiments. The GMD-Snake is assembled of some uniform sections, each one consisting of two rubber joints. The joints can be bent in arbitrary directions, thus making the robot's body very flexible. To imitate closely a real snake and to study different ways of movement, an appropriate control software is necessary, which manages the harmonious motion of all the sections. Therefore, the individual sections are connected to an external processor via a special type of field bus, called CAN bus. Currently, the snake can do its locomotion according to predefined commands. In future, the robot shall be able to use its sensors for flexible interactions with objects of its environment.