Research On Snake-like Robot Control Algorithm Based On Virtual Reality Technology

Snake-like robot is a new type of flexible robot which can adapt to the harsh and complex environments and enter the confined spaces.It is a bionic robot developed by human beings based on the structure and motion characteristics of the biological snake in the nature.At present,snake-like robot is still in the research and experiment stage with less commercialization.But it has good development and application prospects in many field,such as nuclear power maintenance,disaster search and rescue,and other harsh,complex and dangerous areas.These are inconvenient or hard-to-access operating environments for operators,there are great danger.The paper uses virtual reality technology to achieve the monitor and control of the snake-like robot,so that operators can achieve the same effect as on-site operations in the control room.It provides the basis for the application of the snake-like robot in a variety of operating environments.In this paper,a virtual reality system based on Unity 3D engine is developed for the existing snake-like robot hardware platform.It mainly includes the following five parts:First of all,the development requirements and system components of the snake-like robot virtual reality system are clarified,and the overall scheme of the snake-like robot virtual reality system is proposed.It includes the creation and loading of snake-like robot and environment models,the design of control algorithm,network communication and the verification of snake robot body algorithm.Secondly,a complete virtual scene is established in the virtual reality system,mainly including the creation and loading of a virtual snake robot and the surrounding environmental models.The entire process was accurately modeled using Solid Works,then imported into 3ds MAX for model optimization,and the files were converted to.FBX format,and finally imported into the Unity 3D.In order to increase the reality of the whole scene,light sources,shadows,and materials have also been set for the virtual scene.And then,the control algorithm design of the snake-like robot is completed using C# language programming in Unity 3D,which mainly includes the design of motion control algorithm,the design of humanmachine interaction,and the design of collision detection program.Among them,the motion control algorithm realizes the basic movement forms of the snake-like robot,such as forward,backward,pitching up and down,swinging left and right,and meandering over obstacles,and realizes the synchronization function of the virtual reality system with the network communication program.The design of the human-machine interaction realizes the real-time monitoring of the motion and position of the snakelike robot body.The collision detection program realizes the anti-collision function of the virtual reality system.Next,the ADS communication protocol interface component ADSDLL that comes with Beckhoff Twin CAT and the named pipes of interprocess communication mechanism are used to achieve the accurate and efficient transmission process of the data.It realizes the network communication between the virtual snake-like robot and the snake-like robot body,and provides the guarantee for the realization of the synchronization function of the virtual reality system.Finally,a snake-like robot experimental platform based on the virtual reality system is built on the basis of the snake-like robot body.The correctness and feasibility of the virtual reality system control algorithm is verified by the motion and pose synchronization experiment and collision detection experiment.It also proves that the virtual reality system has good synchronization function and anti-collision function.Through the positioning accuracy measurement experiment,the positioning accuracy and the motion stability of the snake-like robot under different motions are obtained,which provides reference for the evaluation of the snake-like robot performance index,and also provides the basis for the subsequent error compensation work.The research results of this paper have important significance for snake-like robot to achieve accurate and efficient motion in complex environment.