thesis snake robot

Control and Design of Snake Robots

Snake robots are ideally suited to highly confined environments because their small cross-sections and highly redundant kinematics allow them to enter and move through tight spaces with a high degree of dexterity. Despite these theoretical advantages, snake robots also pose a number of practical challenges that have limited their usefulness in the field. These challenges include the need to coordinate a large number of degrees of freedom, decreased system reliability due to the serially chained nature of the robot’s design, and the complex interaction of the robot’s shape with the world. This thesis makes progress towards addressing these issues with two main areas of contribution. In the first part, we provide tools for supportive autonomy in snake robots. To provide intuitive high-level autonomous behaviors, we extend our lab’s existing gait-based control framework to develop gait-based compliant control. To reliably and accurately sense the robot’s pose and shape we present new techniques for robust state estimation that leverage the redundancies in the distributed sensing capabilities of our group’s articulated snake robots. To demonstrate these contributions in a practical application, we use them to enable a snake robot to navigate a real-world underground pipe network. One of the most limiting characteristics of our snake robots (and robots in general) is the inability to precisely sense and control the torques and forces of their actuators. As such, the second part of this thesis focuses on the design and control of a new series-elastic actuated snake robot that incorporates a high performance series-elastic actuator (SEA) and torque control. After describing the novel design of the SEA, we discuss our perspective on how to incorporate torque control and series elasticity into snake robots. Finally, we demonstrate prototypes of new low impedance motions for snake robots. These motions naturally comply to obstacles and unstructured terrain, and open a new avenue of research for snake robot locomotion.

Degree Type

• Dissertation
• Robotics Institute

Degree Name

• Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

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• Adaptive Agents and Intelligent Robotics

Review of the Latest Research on Snake Robots Focusing on the Structure, Motion and Control Method

• Regular Papers
• Robot and Applications
• Published: 27 August 2022
• Volume 20 , pages 3393–3409, ( 2022 )

Cite this article

• Junseong Bae 1 ,
• Myeongjin Kim 1 ,
• Bongsub Song 1 ,
• Junmo Yang 1 ,
• Donghyun Kim 1 ,
• Maolin Jin 2 &
• Dongwon Yun   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2254-5274 1  

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3 Citations

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Unlike other types of robots, the snake robot performs unique motions and can move on various terrains such as gravel, stairs, and pipes. Therefore, snake robots are used as exploration robots, rescue robots, and disaster robots. However, the snake robot requires to choose actuators, sensors, and controllers appropriately for overcoming the real environment by using various types of gait. In this paper, we summarized research trends of snake robots for understanding the state of the art technologies of snake robots. We focused on the various development of the snake robots based on previous snake robots’ literature. To look more closely at these research trends, we introduced trends of motion, actuators, sensors, kinematic structure design, control method and application that are related with the snake robots. Snake robots can conduct several motions such as sine wave, side winding, rolling, and so on. These motions are generated by servo motors, DC motors, pneumatic actuators, and smart materials like SMA, IPMC, etc. Also, snake robots require certain data from sensors and proper kinematic structure design to achieve their purposes of operation. Sensors such as camera, force sensor, distance sensor, and kinematic structure design such as passive wheel and motorized wheel can be applied in snake robot for implementing the function or increasing the driving performance. Based on these physical components, the control method is important for operating the snake robot. Navigating algorithms and overcoming terrains with restrictions on movement have been studied with a various control methods.

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Department of Robotics and Mechatronics Engineering, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science and Technology (DGIST), 333, Techno jungang-daero, Hyeonpung-eup, Dalseong-gun, Daegu, 42988, Korea

Junseong Bae, Myeongjin Kim, Bongsub Song, Junmo Yang, Donghyun Kim & Dongwon Yun

Disaster Robotics R&D Center, Korea Institute of Robotics & Technology Convergence, 30, Haean-ro 1106beon-gil, Heunghae-eup, Buk-gu, Pohang-si, Gyeongsangbuk-do, Korea

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This material is based on work supported by the Ministry of Trade, Industry & Energy (MOTIE, Korea) under the Industrial Technology Innovation Program. No. 20003739.

Junseong Bae is a Ph.D. candidate at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST). His research interests include design and analysis of the snake robots.

Myeongjin Kim is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Robotics Engineering, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST). His research interests include design of jumping robot.

Bongsub Song is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Robotics Engineering, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST). His research interests include robotic communication.

Junmo Yang is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Robotics Engineering, Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST). His research interests include design of medical robots.

Donghyun Kim is a Ph.D. candidate at Daegu Gyeongbuk Institute of Science & Technology (DGIST). His research interests include design of grippers.

Maolin Jin received his B.S. degree in material science and mechanical engineering from Yanbian University of Science and Technology, Jilin, China, in 1999, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2004 and 2008, respectively. He is currently a Director & Chief Researcher with the Human-centered Robotics Research Center of the KIRO, Pohang, Korea. His research interests include robust control of nonlinear plants, time-delay control, and robot motion control. Dr. Jin serves as an associate editor of the International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems (IJCAS), Journal of Drive and Control, and Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering.

Dongwon Yun received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Pusan National University, Korea, in 2002, an M.S. degree in mechatronics engineering in 2004 from GIST, Korea, and a Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from KAIST, Korea, in 2013, respectively. He was a Senior Researcher for Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials from 2005 to 2016. He joined the Department of Robotics Engineering, DGIST in 2016 as an Assistant Professor and became an Associate Professor in 2021. His research interests include bio-mimetic robot system, industrial robot system & mechatronics, soft robotics, and sensors & actuators.

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Bae, J., Kim, M., Song, B. et al. Review of the Latest Research on Snake Robots Focusing on the Structure, Motion and Control Method. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 20 , 3393–3409 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-021-0403-7

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Received : 25 May 2021

Revised : 27 February 2022

Accepted : 25 March 2022

Published : 27 August 2022

Issue Date : October 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-021-0403-7

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Design, modelling and control of a modular snake robot with torque feedback for pedal wave locomotion on surfaces with irregularities

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There are life forms with incredibly effective locomotion mechanisms, sensing and computation capabilities, which are invaluable sources of inspiration for researchers. One of these bio-inspired designs is snake-like robots, which their small body cross-section, intrinsic stability, manoeuvrability and hyper-redundancy make them ideal for locomotion in challenging environments. However, design, modelling and control of a snake-like robotic mechanism for effective locomotion on surfaces with irregularities is a challenging task, which requires extensive research work.

In this thesis, the design of a cost-effective modular snake robot is presented for generating pedal wave locomotion (undulatory motion in the vertical plane) on surfaces with irregularities, where the robot lifts its body parts to climb over obstacles. To design the motor torque measurement unit as a reliable and robust environmental sensing mechanism, an elastic element with the desired shape and stiffness has been designed and manufactured using easily accessible Polyurethane sheets and attached between the links and the motors to turn a conventional servo into a Series Elastic Actuator (SEA). The designed torque sensor is calibrated and the resolution and stiffness of the sensor are obtained to be 0.01𝑁. 𝑚 and 1.74 𝑁. 𝑚. 𝑟𝑎𝑑−1, respectively. In addition to the design of the SEAs, the snake robot modules are also designed and manufactured using cost-effective 3D printing method with Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS), which unlike existing snake robot designs are not equipped with wheels allows effective pedal wave locomotion on surfaces with irregularities. Experimentation results are also provided showing the effectiveness of the developed snake robot with SEAs for effective pedal wave motion generation.

Moreover, this thesis introduces the equations of motion of modular 2D snake robots moving in vertical plane employing SEAs for the first time. The kinematics of such 2D modular snake robot is presented in an efficient matrix form and the Euler-Lagrange equations have been constructed to model the robot. Moreover, using a spring-damper (Kelvin-Voigt) contact model, external contact forces, necessary for modelling pedal wave motion are taken into account, which unlike existing methods enables to model the effect of multiple contact points on surfaces with irregularities. Using the constructed model, pedal wave motion of the robot is simulated and the torque signals measured with the elastic element from the simulation and experimentation are compared. The correlation coefficient indicating the similarity between the signals is calculated to be 83.36% showing the validity of the dynamical model. Using the simulated and the physical robot, the effect of friction on the motion of the robot is investigated, which showed that the average speed of the pedal wave is positively correlated with the friction coefficient of the surface.

Additionally, this thesis presents Local Stiffness Control strategy, which with the help of an admittance controller, enables active control of the joint stiffness to achieve adaptive, snake robot pedal wave locomotion. The effectiveness of the proposed controller in comparison to an open-loop control strategy is shown by several experiments, which demonstrates the capability of the robot to successfully climb over an obstacle with the height of more than 55% of the diameter of the snake robot modules, which was not possible with the open-loop gait based control strategy due to side instability of the robot. Moreover, to enable the snake robot to effectively use pedal wave locomotion pattern in more challenging environments, the extend Local Stiffness Control strategy, named Tail-leading Stiffness Control (TSC) strategy is also proposed, which allows propagation of the position feedback signal along the snake body. The experimental results showing the superiority of the TSC strategy compared to both open-loop controllers and the Local Stiffness Control strategy are provided, which proved that TSC strategy with the use of both position feedback between neighbouring joints and the stiffness control concept increases the side stability of the snake robot pedal wave motion. Therefore, enables the developed snake robot with SEAs to successfully use pedal wave motion to move forward in environments with multiple irregularities.

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Modelling and Control of Snake Robots

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Snakes on a... rocket? —

The best robot to search for life could look like a snake, snaking into the ice on enceladus might work better than drilling through it..

Jacek Krywko - Apr 3, 2024 7:45 pm UTC

Icy ocean worlds like Europa or Enceladus are some of the most promising locations for finding extra-terrestrial life in the Solar System because they host liquid water. But to determine if there is something lurking in their alien oceans, we need to get past ice cover that can be dozens of kilometers thick. Any robots we send through the ice would have to do most of the job on their own because communication with these moons takes as much as 155 minutes.

Researchers working on NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory's technology development project called Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) might have a solution to both those problems. It involves using an AI-guided space snake robot. And they actually built one.

Geysers on Enceladus

The most popular idea to get through the ice sheet on Enceladus or Europa so far has been thermal drilling, a technique used for researching glaciers on Earth. It involves a hot drill that simply melts its way through the ice. “Lots of people work on different thermal drilling approaches, but they all have a challenge of sediment accumulation, which impacts the amount of energy needed to make significant progress through the ice sheet,” says Matthew Glinder, the hardware lead of the EELS project.

So, instead of drilling new holes in ice, the EELS team focuses on using ones that are already there. The Cassini mission discovered geyser-like jets shooting water into space from vents in the ice cover near Enceladus’ south pole. “The concept was you’d have a lander to land near a vent and the robot would move on the surface and down into the vent, search the vent, and through the vent go further down into the ocean”, says Matthew Robinson, the EELS project manager.

The problem was that the best Cassini images of the area where that lander would need to touch down have a resolution of roughly 6 meters per pixel, meaning major obstacles to landing could be undetected. To make things worse, those close-up images were monocular, which meant we could not properly figure out the topography. “Look at Mars. First we sent an orbiter. Then we sent a lander. Then we sent a small robot. And then we sent a big robot. This paradigm of exploration allowed us to get very detailed information about the terrain,” says Rohan Thakker, the EELS autonomy lead. “But it takes between seven to 11 years to get to Enceladus. If we followed the same paradigm, it would take a century,” he adds.

All-terrain snakes

To deal with unknown terrain, the EELS team built a robot that could go through almost anything—a versatile, bio-inspired, snake-like design about 4.4 meters long and 35 centimeters in diameter. It weighs about 100 kilograms (on Earth, at least). It’s made of 10 mostly identical segments. “Each of those segments share a combination of shape actuation and screw actuation that rotates the screws fitted on the exterior of the segments to propel the robot through its environment,” explains Glinder. By using those two types of actuators, the robot can move using what the team calls “skin propulsion,” which relies on the rotation of screws, or using one of various shape-based movements that rely on shape actuators. “Sidewinding is one of those gaits where you are just pressing the robot against the environment,” Glinder says.

The standard sensor suite is fitted on the head and includes a set of stereo cameras providing a 360-degree viewing angle. There are also inertial measuring units (IMUs) that use gyroscopes to estimate the robot’s position, and lidar sensors. But it also has a sense of touch. “We are going to have torque force sensors in each segment. This way we will have direct torque plus direct force sensing at each joint,” explains Robinson. All this is supposed to let the EELS robot safely climb up and down Enceladus' vents, hold in place in case of eruptions by pressing itself against the walls, and even navigate by touch alone if cameras and lidar don’t work.

But perhaps the most challenging part of building the EELS robot was its brain.

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NASA’s snake robot is designed to search out life in the icy oceans of a Saturn moon

The snake robot form factor has existed for decades. In addition to the diversity it adds to the world of automation, the design has several pragmatic attributes. The first is redundancy, which allows for the system to keep chugging even after a module is damaged. The second is a body that makes it possible for the serpentine system to navigate tight spaces.

The latter has made snake robots a compelling addition to search-and-rescue teams, as the systems can squeeze into spots people and other robots can’t. Other applications include plumbing and even medical, with scaled down versions that can move around pipes and human organs, respectively. NASA JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), never one to shy away from futuristic robotic applications, has been exploring ways the robust form factor could be deployed to scout out extraterrestrial life.

Image Credits: NASA JPL/Cal-tech

As is so often the case with these sorts of stories, we’re still in the very early stages. Testing is currently being conducted on terrestrial landscapes designed to mimic what such systems could encounter after slipping the surly bonds of this pale blue marble. That means a lot of ice, as NASA researchers are planning to send it to Saturn’s small, cold moon, Enceladus.

Twenty-first-century flybys from Cassini have revealed a water-rich environment, making the ice-covered moon a potential candidate for life in our solar system. The eventual plan is to use the snake robot, Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS) , to explore oceans beneath the moon’s crust and finally answer one of the universe’s big, open questions.

“It is designed to be adaptable to traverse ocean world–inspired terrain, fluidized media, enclosed labyrinthian environments, and liquids,” the team behind the research writes in an article published in this months’ Science Robotics. “Enceladus is the main driver for the design of EELS hardware and software architecture, as well as its mobility and autonomous capabilities. We have been using glaciers as Earth analog ice environments to develop and test its architecture as a stepping stone toward Enceladus.”

For the project, JPL has teamed up with Arizona State University; the University of California, San Diego; and Carnegie Mellon University, the latter of which has a long history designing snake robots. In fact, CMU spinout HEBI Robotics designed the modules being used in this early version of the system.

“On Enceladus, EELS could slither down narrow geysers on the surface and swim through the vast, global ocean, estimated to be six miles deep at the south pole,” notes CMU . “EELS is equipped with risk-aware planning, situational awareness, motion planning and proprioceptive control to allow it to move autonomously far from Earth and the clutches of human control.”

According to NASA, the system weighs 100,000 grams and measures in at 4.4 meters.

A new strategy to regulate the stiffness of snake-inspired robots

R obotic systems inspired by nature can help to efficiently tackle a wide range of problems, ranging from navigating complex environments to seamlessly completing missions as a team. In recent years, roboticists have created a growing number of bio-inspired systems designed to replicate the body structure and movements of various animals, including snakes.

Snake-like robots could have various advantages over other systems with more conventional body structures. Due to their flexible body and sliding motions, they could reach small and confined areas that would otherwise be difficult to access, for instance moving inside pipes, mines, and in other challenging environments.

Despite their potential, so far snake robots have not been successfully deployed on a large-scale. This is in part due to difficulties encountered when trying to effectively modulate these systems' stiffness, allowing there to perform desired motions and reach target positions with high precision.

Researchers at Lancaster University, Beijing Institute of Technology and North China University of Technology recently set out to develop a new design strategy that could help to better regulate the stiffness of snake robots. Their proposed method , outlined in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics , was applied to the development of a snake-like robotic arm with 20 degrees of freedom (DoF).

"Snake robots have been widely used in challenging environments, such as confined spaces," Nan Ma, Haqin Zhou and their colleagues wrote in their paper. "However, most existing snake robots with large length/diameter ratios have low stiffness, and this limits their accuracy and utility. To remedy this, a novel 'macro–micro' structure aided by a new comprehensive stiffness regulation strategy is proposed in this paper."

The macro–micro structure devised by this research team can improve the positional accuracy of snake-like robots as they are navigating confined spaces, both above and under the ground. This structure is accompanied by a newly developed, comprehensive strategy to regulate the robot's stiffness, as well as a kinetostatic model designed to estimate errors.

"The internal friction, variation of cable stiffness as a function of tension, and their effects on the structural stiffness of the snake arm under different configurations have been incorporated into the model to increase the modeling accuracy," Ma, Zhou and their colleagues wrote. "Finally, the proposed models were validated experimentally on a physical prototype and control system (error: 4.3% and 2.5% for straight and curved configurations, respectively)."

Ma, Zhou and their colleagues used their proposed design to develop a prototype system, which they then evaluated in a series of initial tests. Their findings were highly promising, as their strategy enabled them to adjust the tension of the cables driving the snake-like arm's motions by an average of 183.4%.

In the future, this recent study could inform the development of better performing snake-inspired robotic systems, which can be modulated with greater precision and can thus better complete missions in complex and highly confined environments. These robots could prove to be incredibly valuable for assisting human agents during search and rescue operations, to monitor underground environments, and for countless other advanced real-world applications.

More information: Nan Ma et al, Comprehensive stiffness regulation on multi-section snake robot with considering the parasite motion and friction effects, Bioinspiration & Biomimetics (2023). DOI: 10.1088/1748-3190/ad0ffc

© 2023 Science X Network

NASA Testing Snake Robot for Exploring Saturn's Moon

It'll take on any terrain., need to vent.

The next machine to explore alien worlds may slither rather than roll. NASA is currently testing a snake-like robot that its engineers hope will one day be deployed into the oceans of Saturn's moon Enceladus, in search of possible signs of life in its frigid depths.

Dubbed the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), the over 14-foot robot is both autonomous and self-propelled, capable of tackling environments ranging from oceans, sands, rocks, and cliffs thanks to its flexible body made of articulated segments.

That kind of versatility will be crucial. As detailed in a new article published in journal Science Robotics , the researchers are focusing on designing EELS to plunge through vents in Enceladus' icy crust that lead to the subsurface oceans, in which "there is substantial uncertainty with respect to its geometry and the physical properties."

Solitary Serpent

To tackle these uncertain terrains, EELS doesn't just need to be mobile — it needs to be smart, too. Its so-called "perception head," colored black, comes equipped with an array of sensors and optical cameras to see its surroundings. These include light detection and ranging (LiDAR), stereo cameras, and a barometer.

The head also houses the brains of the operation. The goal is for its autonomous decision-making to be "risk-aware," as it navigates vents and oceans miles beneath the surface of Saturn's moon, where it'll be out of contact with its human supervisors.

"We have been using glaciers as Earth analog ice environments to develop and test its architecture as a stepping stone toward Enceladus," the authors wrote in the article.

Cool Customer

Enceladus has intrigued astronomers because data collected by the Cassini probe indicated it had subsurface oceans. That may be less novel now, as more and more moons appear to have oceans too , but one of the reasons Enceladus stands out is that it's also been identified as having all the conditions needed for life .

Last year, observations made with the James Webb Space Telescope showed massive plumes of water bursting through its surface and spewing thousands of miles into space. These vents provide the most straightforward pathway to reaching the moon's oceans, which would otherwise be inaccessible.

A snake-like robot would be well suited for exactly these kinds of conditions. Initially, it'll need to navigate the hard surfaces of Enceladus. Then, descending in a coil, it can use its lengthy and flexible body to push against the walls of the vents in order to resist the water shooting up.

Of course, those capabilities also make EELS a great candidate to explore extreme environments on Earth like Antarctica, so perhaps we won't have to wait for it to take to Saturn's moon to see it in action.

More on robots: This Humanoid Robot Powered by OpenAI Is Almost Scary

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Robot Snakes in Space, AI Love Bots, CEO Drama Beyond the Screen

In this episode of Beyond The Screen, we dive into three groundbreaking stories: NASA's testing of a snake-like robot, called the Exobiology Extant Life Surveyor (EELS), designed to explore alien worlds for signs of life; Grindr's venture into using generative AI for more engaging user experiences amidst challenges; and the turbulent times at Stability AI, following founder Emad Mostaque's departure amid chaos and controversy. Join us as we explore these fascinating developments at the intersection of technology and society. ★ Support this podcast ★

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