INTELLIGENT VISION BASED SNAKE ROBOT

Blessy Mariam Markose, Harshitha Loke

Abstract: Robots are expected to be new tools for the operations and observations in the extreme environments where humans have difficulties in direct access. One of the important matters to realize mobile robots for extreme environments is to establish systems in their structures which are strong enough to disturbances. Also, while considering surveillance in inaccessible remote areas, a need arises for the presence of a robot capable of intruding into small crevices as well as provides proper surveillance. This work aims at the implementation of a snake robot for surveillance operations in remote areas. A biologically inspired robot with various motion patterns is taken into consideration. An important problem in the control of locomotion of robots with multiple degrees of freedom is in adapting the locomotors patterns to the properties of the environment. This has been overcome by using control techniques capable of integrating the motion patterns of a snake. Here an attempt is taken to focus on the creeping locomotion of a living snake. In hybrid model, the optimal locomotion of the snake robot is tried to achieve by comparing it with that of a living snake. A wireless real time vision processing is also employed within the robot to improve its performance. The presence of Video acquisition along with processing will be an added advantage for implementation of the robot for highly precise and difficult surveillance applications. Real time processing of video enables proper and efficient control towards obstacle avoidance pattern of the robot. This ensures that the locomotion of the robot is in a bio-inspired highly efficient path towards the target.

Keywords: Collision-free behavior, neural oscillator, snake locomotion, steering, real time vision processing

DOI: https://doi.org/10.15623/ijret.2014.0303091