Semi-autonomous snake-like robot for search and rescue

Recently, applications of snake-like robots for search and rescue have attracted considerable attentions. However, they have a problem in operability, because many degrees of freedom of their bodies cause complexity of operation. In our previous works, we addressed this problem and developed a prototype snake-like robot that can be controlled easily by a user interface of usual automobile. In this paper, we improve our previous robot for searching in wide-range area like a whole building. To realize our goal, we consider 3 requirements which are Self-contained mechanism, High-mobility, and Semi-autonomy. To demonstrate effectiveness of our proposed mechanism, new snake-like robot is developed and experiments are conducted. As the results, we confirm that proposed robot realize the three requirements and has higher mobility than conventional robots.