Head-navigated locomotion of a snake-like robot for its autonomous obstacle avoidance

Inspired from the natural motion of snakes, a head-navigated locomotion is proposed for snake-like robots in this paper. Different from the traditional serpentine motion, the head of the snake-like robot would always maintain its direction along the forward direction of the whole robot. By utilizing this particular characteristic, the obstacles in front of the undulatory motion could be detected conveniently by a distance sensor installed on the head module. Based on the analysis of the configuration of the snake-like robot in the head-navigated locomotion, CPG-based control is introduced for the control system. Two kinds of control strategies for the realization of the automatic obstacle avoidance are proposed. Both simulation and experiment have been carried out to verify the proposed motion pattern.