Bio-inspired Snake-like Robots
A snake-like robot is a hyper-redundant robot equipped with a large number of motors. This class of robots has a slender structure and elongated body, making it an ideal candidate for applications such as search and rescue, industrial inspection, and even medical procedures. I have primarily been involved in developing new control strategies to enhance their manipulation capabilities and improve their survivability during failure.
Transforming Snake Robot into a Manipulator Arm: This novel approach focused on a snake robot designed to roll along the outer surface of a pipe and temporarily transform part of its body into a manipulator. A snake robot composed of 36 joints was controlled to perform the challenging task of rotating different types of valves while simultaneously rolling along the pipe's outer surface.
Failure Recovery: This approach aims to address the issue of joint failure, which occurs when one or more joints malfunction during motion. Since these robots operate in highly challenging environments, overcoming this problem is critical to ensuring a reliable and resilient system. The developed method facilitates motion recovery for various gaits under multiple failure scenarios.
Resources:
[1] Belal A. Elsayed, Tatsuya Takemori, and Fumitoshi Matsuno, " Gait Recovery for A Snake Robot With Multiple Failed Joints," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, , Vol. 29, No. 4, pp. 2625-2636, 2024.
[2] Belal A. Elsayed, Tatsuya Takemori, Motoyasu Tanaka, and Fumitoshi Matsuno, "Mobile Manipulation Using a Snake Robot in a Helical Gait," IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics, Vol. 27, No. 5, pp. 2600-2611, 2023.