Refined Theoretical Modeling of a New-Generation Pressure-Operated Soft Snake

Abstract

Our pressure-operated soft snake robot promises inherent flexibility and versatility to operate on complex and unpredictable environments compared to traditional snake robots made of rigid linkage chains. We previously presented a theoretical framework to describe its unique dynamic behavior and experimentally verified the accuracy of this model. This previous work had some drawbacks; the maximum center of mass velocity of the previous soft snake was one tenth its body length per second and the dynamic model could not predict the behavior of the robot when following non-linear trajectories because of a lack of frictional torques. In this paper we introduce the next generation of our soft robotic snake we call the “WPI SRS”, which can locomote ten times faster than the previous version. Additionally, we present refinements to the dynamical model that can predict both linear and rotational motions of the robot. Finally, we demonstrate the accuracy of this refined model through experimentation.