Wheelless Soft Robotic Snake Locomotion: Study on Sidewinding and Helical Rolling Gaits

Abstract: Soft robotic snakes (SRSs) have a unique combination of continuous and compliant properties that allow them to imitate the complex movements of biological snakes. Despite the previous attempts to develop SRSs, many have been limited to planar movements or use wheels to achieve locomotion, which restricts their ability to imitate the full range of biological snake movements. We propose a new design for the SRSs that is wheelless and powered by pneumatics, relying solely on spatial bending to achieve its movements. We derive a kinematic model of the proposed SRS and utilize it to achieve two snake locomotion trajectories, namely sidewinding and helical rolling. These movements are experimentally evaluated under different gait parameters on our SRS prototype. The results demonstrate that the SRS can successfully mimic the proposed spatial locomotion trajectories. This is a significant improvement over the previous designs, which were either limited to planar movements or relied on wheels for locomotion. The ability of the SRS to effectively mimic the complex movements of biological snakes opens up new possibilities for its use in various applications.