Helical controller for modular snake robot with non-holonomic constraint

Abstract

In order to control a modular wheeled snake robot, there is a complexity of generating a control solution that has to satisfies non-holonomic constraints which depends on the robot configuration. For a pole climbing application, in which the modular snake robot is required to climb a cylindrical pole vertically, we proposed a control method for the modular snake. By generating the control input such that the pose of the robot follows a helical curve configuration, the control input is constrained to be within the null space of the non-holonomic constraint where the desired wheel velocity can be mapped directly to one-dimensional control input signal of the robot. The proposed controller was successfully implemented and tested in our modular pole climbing snake robot.