Extension and Experimental Demonstration of Gait Transition Network for a Snake Robot

The gait-based control allows the snake robot to move through different environments. The flexible gait transition motion will effectively improve its application in complex environments. To improve the flexibility of gait-based control, this letter proposes a variety of gait transition motions, which extend the gait transition network for snake robots. Firstly, a cost function is designed to guide the parameter conversion within the parameterized gaits based on the sine wave function. Secondly, we choose the crawler gait as the basis to carry out the transition motion design, including the static transition from crawler to serpenoid gait, and the dynamic transition from crawler to ground helix gait and crawler to cylindrical helix gait. Then, we designed a front-end transition method to realize the front-end deformation control of crawler gait. Finally, we report several experiments to verify the effectiveness of the proposed transition motion.