Analysis And Implementation Of Snake-like Robot Of Multi Gaits

In order to apply traditional snake-like robot the ability to makelocomotion in severe circumstance, a new kind of snake-like robot of multigliding gaits was invented. This snake-like robot can move on flat surfacewith serpentine movement or rectilinear movement and can also move inslender pipes with rectilinear movement. The multi gaits snake-like robotwe want to present in this paper mainly includes the following aspects:First of all, we conducted the kinematics analysis of snake-like robot.Serpentine movement was analyzed by the Serpenoid curve which wasproposed by Hirose. We then give its simplified equation based on theSerpenoid curve. The function of the angle of each joint is intuitive and itis easy to control the angle. We divide rectilinear movement into two kindsof movement, single standing wave movement and multi standing wavemovement. These two rectilinear movements have nothing in different butonly the speed of the snake-like robot. We then analyze the dynamic ofSerpentine movement and rectilinear movement and got the dynamicprinciple of moving forward of the snake-like robot.Second, we design the mechanism of the snake-like robot.Mechanism design of the snake-like robot is based on the analysis of thecharacteristic of the two kinds of the gaits before. At first, we must choosearopriate motor drivers to control the joints of snake-like robot.Concerning about the characters, we choose two kinds of servo, one ofthem can rotate180°and the other can rotate360°. The snake-like robot wedesign was consisted by7modules and each of which owns a swing jointand a linear joint and is connected by the swing joint to one another. All ofthe seven units are modularly designed both mechanically and electrically, thus mechanical flexibility is attained.Third, we developed the control system of the snake-like robot.Snake-like robot control system is divided into hardware part and softwarepart. Hardware mainly includes power voltage stabilization circuit,wireless transceiver circuit, serial port circuit and the main control circuit.Software mainly includes uer monitor control software and lowercomputer control software.Fourth, we conducted the simulation. Simulation is an important partof the design of the snake-like robot. We use Matlab and ODE to simulatethe robot’s motion model. Matlab is used to simulate the body curve whendifferent parameters alied to the joint angle equation. ODE is used todetect the smoothness and the speed of the snake–like robot when therobot performs serpentine movement or rectilinear movement. We thenchoose several better sets of parameters and will test them in experiment.Last, we carried the experiment. We conduct an experiment of thesnake-like robot using the control system analyzed before and the result ofthe experiment reveals that the robot we designed meet the basic needs.We can add other compound movement to the robot in the future, but thereare still many deficiencies to be improved.Compared with traditional snake-like robot, the difference betweenthe snake-like robot we developed with traditional snake-like robots is thatit has multi gaits, serpentine movement and rectilinear movement. It canswitch the gait to adapt to the severe environment if necessary. Thesnake-like robot has good performance in experiment. It lays a foundationof multi gaits research in snake-like robots area and has bright prospects.