Shape-Constrained Whole-Body Adaptivity

Abstract

The unique mobility characteristics that make novel robotic platforms potential assets to the search and rescue community can also, unfortunately, provide obstacles in transitioning them from use in the lab to effective use in the field. For example, snake-like robots have small-cross sectional areas that enable them to weave through extremely tightly-packed volumes, e.g., collapsed buildings. Unfortunately, the small size of these robot makes it difficult to incorporate traditional drive mechanisms, like tracks or wheels, and thus makes intuitively driving the robots quite difficult. This paper hypothesizes that, for snake-like robots, one way to extend their overall usefulness is to add layers of mobile autonomy based on biologically inspired behavioral design. A biologically-inspired control architecture that utilizes a novel snake-like robotic platform's ability to locally sense distributed forces along its body is introduced. Preliminary results highlighting how this architecture can be used to facilitate autonomous locomotion in tightly-packed volumes are presented.