Energy efficiency of underwater snake robot locomotion

Energy efficiency is one of the main challenges for long-term autonomy of underwater robotic systems. In this paper, we present results regarding the power consumption of underwater snake robots. In particular, we investigate the relationship between the parameters of the gait patterns, the consumed energy and the forward velocity for different motion patterns for underwater snake robots. Based on a simulation study, we propose empirical rules to choose the parameters of the gait patterns, taking into account both the desired forward velocity and the power consumption of the system. The simulation results show that with respect to the cost of transportation metric, increasing the number of links the energy efficiency decreases for both lateral undulation and eel-like motion.