Mamba - A waterproof snake robot with tactile sensing

Abstract

This paper presents the snake robot Mamba, which is a modular, reconfigurable, and waterproof experimental platform developed to support the ongoing research on snake robot locomotion, including underwater locomotion. A novel contribution of the snake robot is its ability to measure environment contact forces acting along its body, which is achieved by isolating the actuator inside each joint module with a custom-designed force/torque sensor. The paper describes the design of this sensor and presents experimental results which illustrate its performance.