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Obstacle avoidance of snake robot by switching control constraint

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Abstract

In this paper, we propose an obstacle avoidance method for autonomous locomotion control of a snake robot. The snake robot consists of rigid links, active joints and passive wheels, and can move only by varying its shape. The pass planning for the obstacle avoidance is a complicated problem because the snake robot has many states, control inputs and the under-actuated property. In our proposed method, the snake motion is restricted to a periodic undulate curve (called a serpenoid curve) by an additional control constraint and the undulate curve is tuned by switching the control constraint in order that the snake robot avoids the obstacle. Therefore, the path planning is simplified and the snake robot will achieve the obstacle avoidance with an efficient path. In this paper, we denote the details of our method and investigate the effectiveness of our strategy by numerical simulations.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Control and Information System Engineering, Kitakyushu National College of Technology, 5-20-1 Shii Kokuraminamiku, Kitakyushu, Fukuoka, 802-0985, Japan

    Yasunobu Hitaka & Toshikazu Yoshitake

  2. Department of Environmental Robotics, University of Miyazaki, 1-1, Gakuen Kibanadai-nishi, Miyazaki, 889-2192, Japan

    Masahiro Yokomichi

Authors
  1. Yasunobu Hitaka
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  2. Toshikazu Yoshitake
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  3. Masahiro Yokomichi
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yasunobu Hitaka.

Additional information

This work was presented in part at the 17th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 19–21, 2012.

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Hitaka, Y., Yoshitake, T. & Yokomichi, M. Obstacle avoidance of snake robot by switching control constraint. Artif Life Robotics 17, 180–185 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-012-0043-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10015-012-0043-3

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