Short Title: Int. J. Mech. Eng. Robot. Res.
Frequency: Bimonthly
Professor of School of Engineering, Design and Built Environment, Western Sydney University, Australia. His research interests cover Industry 4.0, Additive Manufacturing, Advanced Engineering Materials and Structures (Metals and Composites), Multi-scale Modelling of Materials and Structures, Metal Forming and Metal Surface Treatment.
2025-01-20
2025-01-09
2024-12-18
Manuscript received Augus 29, 2024; revised September 23, 2024; accepted October 21, 2024; published February 17, 2025
Abstract—This paper introduces a novel modular snake robot with 12 degrees of freedom, surpassing the limitations of previous designs that typically focus on flat terrain and fewer degrees of freedom. Inspired by snake biomechanics, our robot utilizes Hirose’s serpentinoid curve equation to achieve efficient and adaptable locomotion over irregular surfaces. During testing with the robot, three gait modes were implemented: rectilinear, sidewinding and lateral undulation, which were simulated in Webots and tested on real terrain. The rectilinear gait, similar to that of the crawler, proved to be effective, but presented some instability in terrain with large obstacles. On the other hand, sidewinding mode, characteristic of snakes in the desert, stood out for its stability on uneven terrain, adapting efficiently to the surface topography. Finally, the lateral undulation locomotion mode, which is the most used by snakes, showed exceptional adaptability to complex terrain, although with lower speed. The results obtained highlight not only the effectiveness of each locomotion mode, but also the importance of modular design and the implementation of multiple degrees of freedom to improve the robot’s performance in various conditions. As future work, it is proposed to explore and implement other locomotion modes and improve the adaptability to more challenging terrains by incorporating sensors to acquire data from the environment and achieve a more autonomous and versatile movement. Keywords—bio-inspired locomotion, gait planning, rectilinear gait, sidewinding, snake robotCite: Jairo J. Marin and Oscar A. Vivas, "Design and Evaluation of a Snake Robot with Bio-inspired Locomotion over Uneven Terrain," International Journal of Mechanical Engineering and Robotics Research, Vol. 14, No. 1, pp. 78-86, 2025. doi: 10.18178/ijmerr.14.1.78-86Copyright © 2025 by the authors. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited (CC BY 4.0).
