Abstract
To improve the adaptability of the snake-like robot in complex environments, we developed a snake-like robot with a prismatic joint. This robot can not only perform the serpentine gait, but also the peristaltic gait like an earthworm. In this research we restrict our attention on the peristaltic locomotion to access a narrow space. The one-way clutch mechanism is used to substitute for the passive wheels to obtain enough friction force in peristaltic locomotion and a basic peristaltic sequence is proposed to realize the peristaltic gait. Experiments are carried out to verify our mechanism design.
