Studying slippage on pushing applications with snake robots

In this paper, a framework for analyzing the resulting motion from the interaction between a snake robot and an object is shown. Metrics are derived to study the resulting motion of the object and robot, showing that the addition of passive wheels to the snake robot helps to minimize slippage. This puts snake robots in a similar framework as robotic arms, while considering special properties exclusive to snake robots, like the lack of a fixed-base or interaction with the environment through friction. An example is studied and some remarks about the results are discussed.