Structural analysis and design of round belt drive snake-like robot

Twisting between adjacent modules drive is the main way to drive the snake-like robot. It is hard to build a mathematical model for the kind of snake-like robot and the control of it is very complex in the realistic environment. In purpose of developing a new kind of snake-like robot which is easy to model, a new way to drive snake-like robot which we call skin drive was invented. With this way, structure of snake-like robot can be very simple and easy to model. Besides control of snake-like robot can be simple. Eventually a snake-like robot was built and it is called round belt drive snake-like robot. Through some experiment and analysis, it is concluded that this new kind of snake-like robot is easy to model and easy to control and its structure is simple to build. In this paper, three important topics were analyzed and elaborated. They are round belt analysis and design, active pulley structure and guide pulley arrangement. Of course, some experiments were done to verify the round belt drive snake-like robot performance. Some experiment process and results were shown at the end in this paper.