GAITS
Central to the project's mission is the ongoing development of motions and behaviors. The snakes locomote using cyclic base functions called "gaits," which can be run by a computer and drive the snake indefinitely. Additionally, combining these gaits and other control techniques leads to the development of "behaviors," which enable the snake robots to perform higher-level tasks such as stair climbing. Ultimately, the goal is to develop these behaviors to allow the snake robots to perform useful tasks in the field.
There are two types of gaits:
- Differentiable gaits: are useful since they can be described by a small set of parameters, thus allowing for a concise representation. All of our differentiable gaits are based upon sinusoidal motion in two axes. Learn more
- Piecewise diffrentiable gaits: Many tasks cannot be completed solely by executing a differentiable gait. These cases arise due to task complexity and robot hardware limitations such as size and motor strength. Piecewise differentiable gaits are developed specifically for the robot to complete a desired task. Examples of such tasks include stairclimbing, gap crossing, reaching into a hole in a wall, railroad track crossing, and camera scanning with the head of the robot. Watch videos