Meeting Abstract
Snakes have lost their limbs and acquired the ability to move in various environments by using a simple one-dimensional body structure through long-term evolutionary process. Specifically, snakes have various locomotion patterns and change them in response to the environment. For example, on an unstructured terrain, snakes actively utilize terrain irregularities and move effectively by actively pushing their bodies against “scaffolds” that they encounter. In a narrow aisle, snakes exhibit concertina locomotion in which the tail part of the body is first pulled forward with the head part anchored, and this is followed by the extension of the head part with the tail part anchored. This ability has attracted attention to roboticists and many snake-like robots have been developed thus far. Most of these robotic studies aim for engineering applications such as search-and-rescue operation, yet our approach is different: our standpoint is “robotics-inspired biology” rather than “bio-inspired robotics”. Namely, we are motivated to understand the decentralized control mechanism underlying adaptive and versatile locomotion of snakes by developing robots. In the presentation, we will introduce our results for these ten years.
