Path Following Control of Snake Robots in Cluttered Environments

With respect to control design, this chapter represents the culmination of this book and can be regarded as a fusion of the control efforts reported in the previous chapters. In particular, forward propulsion of snake robots on planar surfaces based on oscillatory body shape changes was studied early in this book. Subsequently, this oscillatory gait pattern was extended with directional control capabilities that enabled the snake robot to track straight paths and paths defined by waypoints. The oscillatory gait pattern was further extended in the previous chapter with environment adaptation capabilities that enabled the snake robot to maintain forward propulsion in environments with obstacles. Directional control was, however, not considered in the previous chapter.