Title: Iterative feedback control of snake-like robot based on principal fibre bundle modelling

Authors: Masato Ishikawa

Addresses: Department of Systems Science, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Gokasho, Uji, Kyoto 611-0011, Japan

Abstract: This paper is concerned with point-to-point control of a simple 3-link snake robot, which is a typical example of non-holonomic drift-free systems with complicated controllability structure. First, we give a mathematical model of the snake robot in the form of a system on a principal fibre bundle with the structure Lie group SE (2). Then we propose a set of piecewise-linear/sinusoidal periodic input, and an algorithm which determines its design parameters so that the net effect of the input is approximately equal to the desired displacement. Finally, we give an idea of improving this approximation by an online iterative tuning of the design parameters. Effectiveness of the proposed method is evaluated by numerical simulations.

Keywords: undulatory locomotion; non-holonomic systems; differential geometric approach; iterative tuning; feedback control; snake robots; principal fibre bundle modelling; robot control.

DOI: 10.1504/IJAMECHS.2009.023200

International Journal of Advanced Mechatronic Systems, 2009 Vol.1 No.3, pp.175 - 182

Published online: 13 Feb 2009 *

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