Development of a Snake-Like Robot for Traveling Various Environments

Currently, various traveling robots for irregular ground, e.g. crawler type, multi-legged type, and snake-like robots have been developed. While the crawler type and multi-legged type robots have high ability for traveling on irregular grounds, they can not move such environments as underwater, in narrow spaces, on sands and on a wall. On the other hand, the snake-like robots have extremely high potential for traveling on irregular grounds including in narrow spaces, on the wall and so forth. We have been developing a snake-like robot that can travel not only on a flat rough surface but on a tree. We demonstrate that the prototype snake-like robot can travel on a linoleum floor and on an artificial turf. We also discuss a strategy of traveling on a terrain with several pegs.