New connecting mechanism and deployable mechanism used for snakelike robot

Chrysopelea ornate snake have a great skill that help them to switch their body from contractive status to expanding status quickly. It is very attractive and challenging to imitate and adopt this skill into making a bionic snake-like robot with a new deployable mechanism. In order to test and verify this technology, a snake robot was designed. This paper presents the detailed structural design of the parallel mechanism which is used to connect two adjacent units and the deployable mechanism of every units. Preliminary theoretical and simulation analysis are also presented to elaborate the kinematics parameters of the mechanisms. A prototype has been developed to investigate the working performance of the mechanisms.