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Redundant Control of a Planar Snake Robot with Prismatic Joints

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  • Robot and Applications
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Abstract

This paper presents a control method of a planar snake robot with prismatic joints. The kinematic model is derived considering velocity constraints caused by passive wheels. The proposed control method based on the model allows the robot to track a target trajectory by appropriately changing its link length using prismatic joints. The degrees of freedom of prismatic joints are represented as kinematic redundancy in the model and are used in realizing subtasks such as singularity avoidance and obstacle avoidance. In addition, the link length is below its limit when introducing a sigmoid function into the kinematic model. Simulations are carried out to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method and show a novel motion that avoids singular configurations through changes in link lengths.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Intelligent Systems Engineering, Graduate School of Information Science and Engineering, the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, 182-8585, Japan

    Motoyasu Tanaka, Hidemasa Sawabe & Mizuki Nakajima

  2. Department of Mechanical Systems Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Nagoya University, Nagoya, 464-8603, Japan

    Ryo Ariizumi

Authors
  1. Motoyasu Tanaka
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  2. Hidemasa Sawabe
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  3. Mizuki Nakajima
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  4. Ryo Ariizumi
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Correspondence to Motoyasu Tanaka.

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This work was partially supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP18K04011.

Motoyasu Tanaka received his B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, the University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, Japan in 2005, 2007, and 2009, respectively. From 2009 to 2012, he was with Canon, Inc., Tokyo. He is currently a Professor at the Department of Mechanical and Intelligent Systems Engineering, the University of Electro-Communications. His research interests include biologically inspired robotics and dynamics-based nonlinear control. He is a recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Japan Chapter Young Award from the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Japan Chapter in 2006 and the Best Poster Award at SWARM2015: The First International Symposium on Swarm Behavior and Bio-Inspired Robotics in 2015.

Hidemasa Sawabe received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, the University of Electro-Communications in 2018 and 2020, respectively. His research interests include the development and control of snake robots.

Mizuki Nakajima received his B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, the University of Electro-Communications in 2014, 2016, and 2020, respectively. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Intelligent Systems, the University of Electro-Communications. His research interests include the development and control of snake robots.

Ryo Ariizumi received his B.Eng., M.Eng., and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan, in 2010, 2012, and 2015, respectively. He was a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science from 2014 to 2015. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. His research interests include the control of redundant robots and the optimization of robotic systems.

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Tanaka, M., Sawabe, H., Nakajima, M. et al. Redundant Control of a Planar Snake Robot with Prismatic Joints. Int. J. Control Autom. Syst. 19, 3475–3486 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-020-0607-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12555-020-0607-2

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