Papers
Topics
Authors
Recent
Assistant
AI Research Assistant
Well-researched responses based on relevant abstracts and paper content.
Custom Instructions Pro
Preferences or requirements that you'd like Emergent Mind to consider when generating responses.
Gemini 2.5 Flash
Gemini 2.5 Flash 147 tok/s
Gemini 2.5 Pro 52 tok/s Pro
GPT-5 Medium 27 tok/s Pro
GPT-5 High 30 tok/s Pro
GPT-4o 96 tok/s Pro
Kimi K2 188 tok/s Pro
GPT OSS 120B 398 tok/s Pro
Claude Sonnet 4.5 36 tok/s Pro
2000 character limit reached

Robotic modeling of snake traversing large, smooth obstacles reveals stability benefits of body compliance (2002.09711v3)

Published 22 Feb 2020 in physics.bio-ph, cs.SY, eess.SY, and q-bio.QM

Abstract: Snakes can move through almost any terrain. Although their locomotion on flat surfaces using planar gaits is inherently stable, when snakes deform their body out of plane to traverse complex terrain, maintaining stability becomes a challenge. On trees and desert dunes, snakes grip branches or brace against depressed sand for stability. However, how they stably surmount obstacles like boulders too large and smooth to gain such anchor points is less understood. Similarly, snake robots are challenged to stably traverse large, smooth obstacles for search and rescue and building inspection. Our recent study discovered that snakes combine body lateral undulation and cantilevering to stably traverse large steps. Here, we developed a snake robot with this gait and snake-like anisotropic friction and used it as a physical model to understand stability principles. The robot traversed steps as high as a third of its body length rapidly and stably. However, on higher steps, it was more likely to fail due to more frequent rolling and flipping over, which was absent in the snake with a compliant body. Adding body compliance reduced the robot roll instability by statistically improving surface contact, without reducing speed. Besides advancing understanding of snake locomotion, our robot achieved high traversal speed surpassing most previous snake robots and approaching snakes, while maintaining high traversal probability.

Citations (38)

Summary

We haven't generated a summary for this paper yet.

Lightbulb Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

Continue Learning

We haven't generated follow-up questions for this paper yet.

Authors (2)

List To Do Tasks Checklist Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

Collections

Sign up for free to add this paper to one or more collections.

X Twitter Logo Streamline Icon: https://streamlinehq.com

Tweets

This paper has been mentioned in 1 tweet and received 0 likes.

Upgrade to Pro to view all of the tweets about this paper: