Emergence of serpentine locomotion of snake robot using anisotropic friction and sensory feedback

Abstract

This study aims to develop a snake robot that can autonomously slither over terrains with different surface friction, like outdoor environments. We build a snake robot with a scaled up plate under each segment, based on the property of longitudinal frictional anisotropy of a real snake’s scales. The robot is driven by central pattern generators (CPGs) with two kinds of sensory feedback. Sensory feedback affects the CPG for each joint and autonomously changes the phase differences between CPGs. Adjacent CPGs are excitedly coupled with each other to help their movement and oscillate in phase. However, the snake robot autonomously makes serpentine locomotion because of sensory feedback.