Abstract
The purpose of this paper is designing a head control system capable of adapting to passive side-slipping. The environments in which snake-like robots are expected to be utilized generally have ground surface conditions with nonuniform frictional coefficients. In such conditions, the passive wheels of the snake-like robot have a chance of side-slipping. To locomote the snake-like robot dexterously, a control system which adapts to such side-slipping is desired. There are two key points to realizing such a system: First, a dynamic model capable of representing the passive side-slipping must be formulated. A solution for the first key point is to develop a switching dynamic model for the snake-like robot, which switches depending on the occurrence of the side-slipping, by utilizing a projection method. The second key point is to adapt the control system’s behavior to side-slipping. An idea for such a solution is to include the side-slipping velocity in the weighting matrices. An algorithm to estimate the occurrence of side-slipping and the particular side-slipping link is constructed, to formulate the dynamic model depending on the actual side-slipping situation. The effectiveness of the designed Luenberger observer and the head control system for side-slipping adaptation is verified through numerical simulation.
Highlights
A real snake has a simple, string-like figure and can locomote by utilizing the difference between friction in the propulsive direction and that in the normal direction
A snake-like robot mimics the high level of adaptability of a real snake and is expected to be adaptable to given environments/tasks
In the axial direction of the passive wheel of a snake-like robot, the constraint forces preventing side-slipping from occurring satisfy the following condition, vyi = 0 ∩ f ni ≤ f max, (i = 1, · · ·, 5)
Summary
A real snake has a simple, string-like figure and can locomote by utilizing the difference between friction in the propulsive direction and that in the normal direction. It can locomote on flat land, and irregular terrains, such as those of deserts, wildlands, and grasslands, by choosing its motion and posture depending on the environment/task. A pioneer in the study of snake-like robots, found that the curvature of a snake changes sinusoidally along its body axis. Endo et al implemented the propulsive locomotion control of snake-like robots by utilizing the Serpenoid Curve [2].
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