Flexible snake robot: Design and implementation

This paper presents a snake robot able to pass different and difficult paths because of special physical form and movement joints mechanism. These snake robots have no passive wheels. The robot moves by friction between the robot body and the surface on which it is. The joints have been designed and fabricated in a way that each joint has two freedom grades and it may move 228 degrees in every direction. Each joint has two DC servo motors and the power is transferred from the motors output to the joint shaft through bevel gear. The flexibility of the robot makes possible to move forward, back and laterally by imitating real snake´s moves. In this paper different measures have been presented in order to design and assemble the joints, motors driver, different ways to guide the robot and its vision.