Abstract
Snake-like robots can be classified by two features, namely whether they have active joints, and whether they have active driving mechanism such as wheels or crawlers. Snake-like robots which have active joints active wheels are especially expected to be suitable for practical use (e.g. pipe inspection, rescue operations) due to its traversability and simple structure for watertightness. In prior research, we have developed this kind of snake-like robot ACM-R4.1, which has watertight structure and joint torque sensors which also act as torque limiter. Though the R4.1 has high terrain adaptability, we found some problems which have to be overcome such as stuck in rough terrain. Thus we developed more practical snake-like robot ACM-R4.2. The features of the R4.2 are (1)Light plastic housing made by vacuum injection method (2)Thin yaw-axis joints (3)Wider wheels than those of R4.1. We also tested the performance of R4.2 and it showed a higher traversability than that of R4.1.
