Research On Structure Design And Motion Control Of Snake Like Robot

The snake-like robot is a kind of high redundancy structure and the movement mechanism of the bionic robot is modeled on biological snakes. Compared with the foot, wheeled, tracked and other types of mobile robot, the snake-like robot has the advantages of smaller size, more forms of motion, and stronger ground adaptability. It has broad application prospects in the field of disaster relief, military reconnaissance, interstellar exploration and so on. This paper chooses snake as the research object and presents a new type of snake-like robot having the obstacle climbing capability.Firstly, the mechanical structure of snake-like robot is designed. In this paper, the characteristics of skeletal structure and the common forms of movement of the snake are analyzed, and the kinematics of snake motion is analyzed. The force principle of moving forward of the snake-like robot is obtained. Based on those, the joint module of snakelike robot is designed. Besides, joint driving mode and power source are selected. Due to the advantage of smaller density and higher intensity, polyoxymethylene is used to manufacture the robot. The three-dimensional model of the snake-like robot is established, and the finite element analysis is carried out on key parts of the snake-like robot by use of the finite element analysis software.Secondly, motion planning of the snake-like robot is completed. Serpentine locomotion, turning motion and body-lifting method are analyzed. The paper has conducted the research focusing on the influence of the robot’s joint angle parameters on waveforms and speed of serpentine locomotion. In order to improve obstacle-climbing capability of the snake-like robot, this paper presents a new mode of motion named winding-inchworm motion, which can be used to climb over obstacles. The validity of the proposed methods is being demonstrated by the results of ADAMS virtual prototype simulation.Thirdly, the snake-like robot control system is designed. Through the analysis of centralized control system and distributed control system of the snake-like robot, we decide to use the master-slave distributed control system. Based on those, we select the hardware of the control system. The online control program of the snake-like robot is completed by C++, and the motion control program is written by Arduino language. The image acquisition system is also designed in this paper. By the reasonable choice of the camera and wireless transmission module, the image acquisition and transmission problem of the snake-like robot is being solved, and the robot acquires the ability of the video surveillance and reconnaissance.Lastly, a series of experiments on the snake-like robot prototype are accomplished. The reliability of the snake-like robot body structure and control system is verified by experiments. The snake-like robot can realize the serpentine locomotion, turning motion, body-lifting motion and obstacle climbing. The influence of the robot’s joint angle parameters on waveforms and speed of serpentine locomotion is explored further. The feasibility of the image acquisition and transmission system is also verified by experiments on the snake-like robot prototype.