Frictional Compliance Model Development and Experiments for Snake Robot Climbing

Intelligently utilizing the frictional contact between a robot and its environment can prevent slip, maintain balance, and provide stability during a robot´s motion. A contact model is first needed to enable robot control achieving these goals. The model should be both accurate and simple enough to allow further system analysis. In this paper we propose a simple parametric contact model, based on the form of the Hertz-Walton model. We experimentally demonstrate that this contact model can be effectively used to predict contact forces for linear and near-linear loading paths. Finally, we briefly discuss the applicability of the presented contact model for snake robot climbing. The control of the snake robot is based on stabilizing a sequence of set points.