A hybrid model of obstacle-aided snake robot locomotion

A snake can traverse cluttered and irregular environments by using irregularities around its body as push-points to aid the propulsion. This characteristic feature of biological snake locomotion, denoted obstacle-aided locomotion, is investigated for snake robot locomotion purposes in this paper. The paper presents a hybrid model of the dynamics of a planar snake robot interacting with obstacles in its environment. Obstacle contact forces are calculated by formulating and solving a linear complementarity problem (LCP). The existence and uniqueness properties of the state evolution of the hybrid model are investigated. Simulation results validate the hybrid modelling approach.