The Effect of Snake Muscular System on Actuators' Torque

Most of the research conducted on snake robots has been on movement, control or dynamics. There is only some research dealing with the reduction of actuators' sizes. Actuator size usually depends on the force/torque it can provide. Small actuators imply a more efficient, long lasting, lighter and more flexible robot. The required force/torque and energy consumption consequently is directly affected by the mechanism design. Mother nature has always presented optimum systems and has inspired engineers. In this paper, we have adopted the snake anatomy to design a snake robot. The results show a reduction in torque demand. This robot is an extension of our previous research on building a snake without including the anatomy. The new robot weighs about only one-third of the previous version.