CMU Biorobotics Unified Snake Climbing

Carnegie Mellon University’s Biorobotics Lab shows off their new modular snake robot, Unified Snake. Watch as it climbs up a pole, performs rolls, and sidewinds.

CMU

CMU Biorobotics Unified Snake Rolling

This work considers two issues: snake robot locomotion and modular robot design. We achieve snake robot locomotion by designing gaits, which are cyclic internal motions that allow the mechanism to interact with the environment to propel itself forward. Our gaits enable snake robots to maneuver through a variety three-dimensional terrains and include swimming and climbing. The robots, themselves, are a modular chain of single degree of freedom units each powered by a low-cost, yet modified, hobby servo that we call the Super Servo. We have updated the internal electronics in the servo as well as created new mechanism designs so as to optimize efficiency and robustness.

http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~biorobotics/index.html