Joint-repositionable Inner-wireless Planar Snake Robot

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lightweight, energy-efficient snake robot with reconfigurable joints and wireless power, enhancing terrain adaptability and reducing power consumption compared to traditional designs.

Contribution

It presents a novel joint-repositionable mechanism combined with wireless power transfer, enabling flexible, multi-joint locomotion with fewer motor units and lower energy use.

Findings

Lightweight design at 1.3 kg.

Wireless power transfer of 7.6 watts.

High degree of bending and reconfigurability.

Abstract

Bio-inspired multi-joint snake robots offer the advantages of terrain adaptability due to their limbless structure and high flexibility. However, a series of dozens of motor units in typical multiple-joint snake robots results in a heavy body structure and hundreds of watts of high power consumption. This paper presents a joint-repositionable, inner-wireless snake robot that enables multi-joint-like locomotion using a low-powered underactuated mechanism. The snake robot, consisting of a series of flexible passive links, can dynamically change its joint coupling configuration by repositioning motor-driven joint units along rack gears inside the robot. Additionally, a soft robot skin wirelessly powers the internal joint units, avoiding the risk of wire tangling and disconnection caused by the movable joint units. The combination of the joint-repositionable mechanism and the wireless-charging-enabled soft skin achieves a high degree of bending, along with a lightweight structure of 1.3 kg and energy-efficient wireless power transmission of 7.6 watts.