Due to the unique and highly effective gaits used by snakes to traverse in unstructured environments, development of snake-inspired robot has garnered great interest in the bio-inspired robotics community. In this paper, we present a novel snake-like robot able to realize various gaits including three different patterns: undulation, rectilinear and rolling locomotion. Among these gaits, we specially describe the rolling locomotion that conventional robots and snakes in the nature do not possess. We report the design of wireless control system for four modules consisting three motors, which drive rotational, translational and rolling joints. Thus, the robot may be able to work through remote control, which promises that when robot realizes rolling motion, control cable won't enwind the body. We also achieve experiments to show that the robot is capable of turning around rapidly utilizing special rolling motion pattern on horizontal plane, and the snake robot is able to perform in complex environments utilizing composition gaits.
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