Modelling, Design and Kinematic Control Strategies for Snake-like Robot locomotion – A Review

Research on the development of robots that mimic biological snakes has been a major trend in the past few years. This work reviews the major research efforts and contributions to snake-like robots focusing on previous research efforts on snake-like robots modelling techniques, snake-like robots physical design, the kinematic and morphological control strategies for snake-like robot locomotion and practical applications of snake-like robots. The possibility of designing locomotion control model based on Reinforcement learning for snake-like robot was also investigated. The reviewed literatures revealed that even though more research works have considered snake-like robot locomotion on environments without obstacles or lab environments, there is now a growing interest in designing and developing snake-like robots for locomotion in environments with obstacles and that could be used in real life applications rather than in the lab environment. The review also shows that application of Reinforcement Learning method in designing control model for snake-like robot locomotion rather than the traditional and conventional control methods proposed by majority of the literatures on snake-like robots is attracting a lot of research interest.