Path following control of planar snake robots using a cascaded approach

This paper considers path following control of snake robots along straight paths. The proposed controller propels the snake robot forward according to the motion pattern lateral undulation while simultaneously adjusting the heading of the robot according to a line-of-sight guidance law that steers the robot towards and subsequently along the desired path. Under the assumption that the forward velocity of the snake robot is nonzero and positive, we prove that the proposed path following controller K-exponentially stabilizes a snake robot to any desired straight path. The paper presents simulation results that illustrate the effectiveness of the path following controller.