Snake Robots

This thorough treatment of snake robotics ranges from mathematical modeling techniques, through mechatronic design and implementation, to control design strategies. Describes the development of two example robots, and offers an overview of current literature.

Snake Robots is a novel treatment of theoretical and practical topics related to snake robots: robotic mechanisms designed to move like biological snakes and able to operate in challenging environments in which human presence is either undesirable or impossible. Future applications of such robots include search and rescue, inspection and maintenance, and subsea operations. Locomotion in unstructured environments is a focus for this book.
The text targets the disparate muddle of approaches to modelling, development and control of snake robots in current literature, giving a unified presentation of recent research results on snake robot locomotion to increase the reader’s basic understanding of these mechanisms and their motion dynamics and clarify the state of the art in the field. The book is a complete treatment of snake robotics, with topics ranging from mathematical modelling techniques, through mechatronic design and implementation, to control design strategies. The development of two snake robots is described and both are used to provide experimental validation of many of the theoretical results.
Snake Robots is written in a clear and easily understandable manner which makes the material accessible by specialists in the field and non-experts alike. Numerous illustrative figures and images help readers to visualize the material. The book is particularly useful to new researchers taking on a topic related to snake robots because it  provides an extensive overview of the snake robot literature and also represents a suitable starting point for research in this area.

From the Contents: Part I: Snake Robot Locomotion on Planar Surfaces.- A Complex Model of Snake Robot Locomotion.- Development of the Mechanical Snake Wheeko.- Analysis and Synthesis of Snake Robot Locomotion.- Path-following Control and Poincaré Map Analysis.- Part II: Snake Robot Locomotion in Unstructured Environments.- Introduction to Part II.- A Hybrid Model of Snake Robot Locomotion.- Development of the Mechanical Snake Kulko.