Snake Robot Climbs a Tree [video] (2010)

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I used to work on this project - surprised to see it on the front of HN. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions.

This video is relatively old. Here are some more recent videos of where the technology is now:

Overview of the most recent robot design: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=64&v=te4M-b69fVs

Video of the "Snake Monster" made with multiple snake robots as legs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMVO6rI5mL4

Main webpage about the project: http://www.snakerobot.com

I really love how its movement is so fluid, especially in the video you just linked to.

Is there any reason you couldn't power it via battery, instead of tethering it?

In the past we did some that were battery powered, and it's doable.

As a research project, a lot of the research is on the motion and mechanism design. Given limited resources (both budget and people), battery power was removed from the scope of the project until there's a strong reason to do it. It's more of an engineering challenge than actual science if that makes sense.

Cheers, yeah I imagine for lab work it makes more sense to have it tethered.

I was just thinking how cool it'd be to let it climb up the whole tree by itself.

How much design and algorithm design did you do in simulation as opposed to using the physical robot itself?

It's a mix of both. In terms of simulating the shape the robot makes and visualizing its motion, that is basically all done in software the first time. Simulating interactions with the environment, however, is quite difficult. While we did have a simulator, most work was done on the robot itself.

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