2022/03/09 by Alexander H. Chang, Chang, Alexander H., Patricio A. Vela +1
Engineering · #Dynamics and Control of Mechanical Systems #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Railway Engineering and Dynamics #Robotics (cs.RO) #Soil Mechanics and Vehicle Dynamics #Systems and Control (eess.SY) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2203.05043
openalex publication_date 2022/03/09 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Gaits engineered for snake-like robots to rotate in-place instrumentally fill a gap in the set of locomotive gaits that have traditionally prioritized translation. This paper designs a Turn-in-Place gait and demonstrates the ability of a shape-centric modeling framework to capture the gait's locomotive properties. Shape modeling for turning involves a time-varying continuous body curve described by a standing wave. Presumed viscous robot-ground frictional interactions lead to body dynamics conditioned on the time-varying shape model. The dynamic equations describing the Turn-in-Place gait are validated by an articulated snake-like robot using a physics-based simulator and a physical robot. The results affirm the shape-centric modeling framework's capacity to model a variety of snake-like robot gaits with fundamentally different body-ground contact patterns. As an applied demonstration, example locomotion scenarios partner the shape-centric Turn-in-Place gait with a Rectilinear gait for maneuvering through constrained environments based on a multi-modal locomotive planning strategy. Unified shape-centric modeling facilitates trajectory planning and tracking for a snake-like robot to successfully negotiate non-trivial obstacle configurations.