Investigating the Mechanics of Snake Climbing Through the Use of a Robot Analog Open Access

Abstract

Snakes provide an excellent example of limbless locomotion in nature. Animal movement is

often highly variable and difficult to fully reproduce as animals are often influenced by a wide

array of outside factors, and snakes are no exception. This can cause potential inconsistency

in measurements taken of the movement of real snakes, which can make research into snake

movement more difficult. While there have been previous attempts to understand how

snakes climb through the use of coiling their bodies, there is limited research that seeks to

understand snake climbing that relies on the snake weaving its body between obstacles, a

form of movement that snakes engage in to climb between gaps in tree bark. In order to

analyze the interactions occurring during snake climbing in a more controlled and consistent

manner, we built a robot snake that serves as a simple model for serpentine motion with the

ability to change several movement parameters. We then tuned these parameters to produce

a wave of bending along the snake’s body that matches the geometry of a board of regularly

spaced pegs. Our snake robot was able to successfully climb a vertical peg wall with pegs

evenly spaced 10.2 cm, 12.7 cm, and 15.2 cm apart, and was able to do so both upwards and

downwards. We believe that this identifies a minimal condition for climbing, and suggests

that reliance on friction is not necessary for this climbing method.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction 1

1.1 Methods of Snake Locomotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.1.1 Sidewinding and Rectilinear Locomotion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.1.2 Concertina . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

1.1.3 Lateral Undulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

1.2 Previous Work in Robotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.2.1 Intricate Robotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

1.2.2 Simple Robotics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

1.3 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

1.4 Thesis Outline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

2 Experimental Design 17

i

2.1 Snake Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

2.2 Pegboard Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

2.3 Climbing Trials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

3 Results 30

3.1 Trajectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

3.2 Angle Between Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

3.3 Wavelength . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

3.4 Displacement Per Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

4 Discussion 41

4.1 Climbing Success . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4.2 Trajectories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42

4.3 Angle Between Segments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

4.4 Displacement Per Cycle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

4.5 Peg Spacing Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

5 Conclusion 52

5.1 Future Work . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

5.2 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56

About this Master's Thesis

Rights statement

• Permission granted by the author to include this thesis or dissertation in this repository. All rights reserved by the author. Please contact the author for information regarding the reproduction and use of this thesis or dissertation.

School	Laney Graduate School
Department	Physics
Degree	M.S.
Submission	Master's Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Physics, General
Keyword	Snake Climbing Robot Snake Snake Limbless Snake Locomotion Pegboard
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Jennifer Rieser, Emory University
Committee Members	Justin Burton, Emory University James Kindt, Emory University Kurt Warncke, Emory University

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