Snakebot

A Gen 2 Snakebot from NASA, demonstrating rearing capabilities.

The Snakebot, also known as a snake robot, is a biomorphic, hyper-redundant robot that resembles a snake. Snake robots come in many shapes and sizes, including the "Anna Konda" developed by SINTEF, a hydraulic fire fighting robot with a length of 3 metres[1] and the medical Snakebot developed at Carnegie Mellon University, which is capable of maneuvering around organs inside a human chest cavity.[2] Snakebots have uses similar to those of certain types of soft robots.[3]

Snakebots can vary significantly in size and design. Their small cross-section-to-length ratios allow them to maneuver through tight spaces, while their ability to change shape enables them to traverse varied terrain.[4]

Many snake robots are constructed by chaining together several independent links. This redundancy allows them to continue operating even after parts of their bodies are damaged. Snake robots have several common properties such as high trainability, redundancy, and the ability to completely seal their bodies. These properties make snake robots notable for practical applications and as a research topic.[5][6]

A Snakebot differs from a snake-arm robot in that Snakebots are usually self-contained, whereas snake-arm robots typically have mechanics remote from the arm itself, possibly connected to a larger system.[citation needed]

  1. ^ Pål Liljebäck. "Anna Konda – The fire fighting snake robot | ROBOTNOR". Robotnor.no. Retrieved 2016-05-04.
  2. ^ "Medical Snake Robot | Medical Robotics - Carnegie Mellon University". medrobotics.ri.cmu.edu. Retrieved 2024-10-23.
  3. ^ Seeja, G.; Arockia Selvakumar Arockia, Doss; Berlin Hency, V. (8 September 2022). "A Survey on Snake Robot Locomotion". IEEE Access. 10: 112109–112110. Bibcode:2022IEEEA..10k2100S. doi:10.1109/ACCESS.2022.3215162.
  4. ^ Liu, Jindong; Tong, Yuchuang; Liu, Jinguo (18 April 2021). "Review of snake robots in constrained environments". Robotics and Autonomous Systems. 141. ISSN 0921-8890 – via Elsevier.
  5. ^ Transeth, Aksel Andreas; Pettersen, Kristin Ytterstad (Dec 2006). "Developments in Snake Robot Modeling and Locomotion". 2006 9th International Conference on Control, Automation, Robotics and Vision. pp. 1–8. doi:10.1109/ICARCV.2006.345142. ISBN 978-1-4244-0341-7. S2CID 2337372.
  6. ^ Liljebäck, P.; Pettersen, K. Y.; Stavdahl, Ø.; Gravdahl, J. T. (2013). Snake Robots - Modelling, Mechatronics, and Control. Advances in Industrial Control. Springer. doi:10.1007/978-1-4471-2996-7. ISBN 978-1-4471-2995-0.