COUPLED-DRIVE BASED JOINT DESIGN OF A SNAKE ROBOT AND ITS BODY-LIFTING METHOD

A novel joint mechanism for snake like robot has been designed,which has 3 degrees of freedom among then 2 degrees of freedom are driven through coupled drive.The snake like robot composed of these joints can acquire larger moment and larger workspace.In this paper,we present the principle of the joint design that is based on coupled drive,and introduce the lifting method of the snake like robot and the effect of maximum joint angle α.Through the analysis,we draw a conclusion that the number of units that the snake like robot possibly lifts is the square of the number of units that the snake like robot can directly lift.This is also confirmed by a simple example.