Robots: Slithering Creatures

Posted 27 Oct 2009 at 10:27 UTC by mwaibel

Snakes are exceptionally agile, which allows them to slide, squeeze, climb or slither into places that people and most other types of robots can't reach. This makes snake robots very attractive in spite of the hair-raising complexity of the required mechanics and control algorithms. The latest episode of the Robots podcast interviews two leading researchers working on snake robots: Howie Choset is an associate professor and the director of the BioRobotics Lab at Carnegie Mellon University where his research in path planning, motion planning and estimation have been used to control a range of snake-inspired robots. Among other things, his group has built robots capable of more than 10 different snake gaits, from sidewinding to pipe rolling. Check out the video above for a first glimpse of his work. This episode's second guest is Erik Kyrkjebø, Senior Researcher at the Applied Cybernetic department at Scandinavia's largest independent research organization, the SINTEF in Norway. Kyrkjebo talks about the PiKo pipe inspection robot and the fire fighting robot Anna Konda which is propelled by water. For more information read on on the Robots webpage or directly tune in to this episode.