Joint-repositionable Inner-wireless Planar Snake Robot
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.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2411.13916,
title = {Joint-repositionable Inner-wireless Planar Snake Robot},
author = {Ayato Kanada and Ryo Takahashi and Keito Hayashi and Ryusuke Hosaka and Wakako Yukita and Yasutaka Nakashima and Tomoyuki Yokota and Takao Someya and Mitsuhiro Kamezaki and Yoshihiro Kawahara and Motoji Yamamoto},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2411.13916},
year = {2025}
}