Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work.

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying

this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright.

These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

... Entries are listed in reverse chronological order. Limbless Locomotion: Learning

to Crawl with a Snake Robot K. Dowling doctoral dissertation, tech. ...

[PDF] Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot

... Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot (Dowling) -- 1997 Doctoral

thesis, describes the design and control of a 20 degree-of-freedom snake ...

... 1 Limbless locomotion: learning to crawl with a snake robot (context) - Dowling

- 1997 1 Development of an articulated transporter/manipulator system (context ...

[PDF] Self-Assembling Serpentine Robot

©2004 Google

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work.

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying

this information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright.

These works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

RI Publications Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot

Text only version of this site

Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot

K. Dowling

doctoral dissertation, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-97-48, Robotics Institute, Carnegie

Mellon University, December, 1997.

Jump to: Download Abstract Notes Text Reference BibTeX Reference

Download [Help]

Adobe portable document format (pdf) [3253 KB]

Compressed postscript (ps.gz) [4098 KB]

Copyright notice: This material is presented to ensure timely dissemination of scholarly and technical work.

Copyright and all rights therein are retained by authors or by other copyright holders. All persons copying this

information are expected to adhere to the terms and constraints invoked by each author's copyright. These

works may not be reposted without the explicit permission of the copyright holder.

Abstract

Snake robots that learn to locomote

Robots can locomote using body motions; not wheels or legs. Natural analogues, such as snakes, although

capable of such locomotion, are understood only in a qualitative sense and the detailed mechanics, sensing

and control of snake motions are not well understood.

Historically, mobile vehicles for terrestrial use have either been wheeled, tracked or legged. Prior art reveals

several serpentine locomotor efforts, but there is little in the way of practical mechanisms and flexible control

for limbless locomoting devices. Those mechanisms that exist in the laboratory exhibit only the rough features

of natural limbless locomotors such as snakes.

The motivation for this work stems from environments where traditional machines are precluded due to size or

shape and where appendages such as wheels or legs cause entrapment or failure. Example environments include

tight spaces, long narrow interior traverses, and movement over loose materials and terrains. Several applications,

including industrial inspection and exploration of hazardous environments, compel serpentine robots.

This research develops a general framework for teaching a complex electromechanical robot to become mobile

where sequences of body motions alone provide progression. The framework incorporates a learning technique,

physical modeling, metrics for evaluation, and the transfer of results to a snake-like mobile robot. The mechanism

and control of a 20 degree of freedom snake robot is described and multiple gaits are demonstrated including novel

non-biological gaits. This research furthers the design and control of limbless robots.

Notes

Sponsor: NASA

Grant ID: N00014-95-1-0591, IRI-9224521

Number of pages: 150

Text Reference

K. Dowling, Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot,

doctoral dissertation, tech. report CMU-RI-TR-97-48, Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, December, 1997.

BibTeX Reference

@phdthesis{Dowling_1997_460,

author = "Kevin Dowling",

title = "Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot",

school = "Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University",

month = "December",

year = "1997",

address = "Pittsburgh, PA"

}

The Robotics Institute is part of the School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University.

For updates and comments, please see these instructions.

This page maintained by robotwebmaster@ri.cmu.edu

Limbless Locomotion: Learning to

Crawl with a Snake Robot