2000 Volume 18 Issue 8 Pages 1133-1140
In this paper, we discuss an autonomous locomotion control of a snake-like robot which is modeled by some links with passive wheels. When the robot locomotes windingly, it should always keep the high locomotable shape, because its locomotability depends on its own shape. Then, we utilized a notion of manipulability to evaluate the locomotability, and proposed a controller to make it autonomously locomote in a desired direction without decreasing the manipulability. In this method, the robot spontaneously generates its gait, so we don't need to design any gaits. Moreover, by some simulations, it was proved that the method realizes the autonomous locomotion without taking singular postures.
