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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
Robotic Snake Locomotion Exploiting Body
Compliance and Uniform Body Tensions
Junhyoung Ha , Member, IEEE
Abstract—The undulatory locomotion of snakes is one unique
wonder of mechanical motions in nature. Traditionally, snakes
were thought to push surrounding objects to propel their mo-
tion. However, this does not explain their forward locomotion and
sidewinding on a flat surface. Recent studies have shown that
the snake’s forward locomotion and sidewinding are aided by a
nonuniform ground-contact distribution. In this article, we propose
a novel control strategy to achieve nonuniform ground contacts for
a robotic snake locomotion using body compliance and uniform
body tension. First, we present a set of mechanical analyses for
a continuum snake model. Then, we demonstrate that the deflec-
tion under gravity resulting from body compliance and uniform
body tension naturally yields the contact distributions required
for forward and backward locomotion and sidewinding. Finally, a
simple control strategy is suggested for a robotic snake locomotion,
which was validated through dynamic simulations and physical
experiments.
Index Terms—Compliant robot control, snake locomotion, snake
robot.
I. INTRODUCTION
NAKES can navigate through almost any terrain by curv-
S ing their bodies and interacting with the ground and sur-
rounding objects. Their unique locomotion has fascinated many
robotics’ researchers and has motivated the development of
robots that can mimic their unique locomotion.
It is traditionally thought that snakes push against surrounding
objects to navigate. Extensive studies have been conducted
on snake locomotion and its robotization over the past few
decades [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7] in which two main cat-
egories prevailed: undulatory [1], [2], [3], [4], [8] and nonun-
dulatory locomotions [5], [6], [7]. In studies of nonundulatory
locomotion, the traditional thought that snakes propel by pushing
objects is generally valid. The interaction between a snake and
surrounding objects during motion was mechanically analyzed
and utilized to control snake-like robots [9], [10], [11].
However, the undulatory locomotion is not fully explained by
the snake’s interaction with surrounding objects. For instance,
Manuscript received 18 February 2023; revised 27 May 2023; accepted 21
June 2023. This work was supported by the National Research Foundation
of Korea under Grant 2022R1C1C1005483 funded by the Korea Government
(MSIT). This paper was recommended for publication by Associate Editor J.
Zhao and Editor A. Menciassi upon evaluation of the reviewers’ comments.
The author is with the Center for Healthcare Robotics, Korea Institute of Sci-
ence and Technology, Seoul 02792, South Korea (e-mail: hjhdog1@gmail.com).
This article has supplementary material provided by the au-
thor and color versions of one or more figures available at
https://doi.org/10.1109/TRO.2023.3294919.
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TRO.2023.3294919
1552-3098 © 2023 IEEE. Personal use is permitted, but republication/redistribution requires IEEE permission.
See https://www.ieee.org/publications/rights/index.html for more information.
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1
snakes can undulate forward or sideways on a flat ground
surface, even in the absence of obstacles. Many studies have
investigated the principles of this type of locomotion. It has been
found that snakes utilize anisotropic skin friction for forward
locomotion [12] and nonuniform ground contacts for forward
locomotion and sidewinding [12], [13], [14]. These studies ob-
served anisotropic skin friction and nonuniform ground contacts
in snakes and validated the observations through numerical
simulations and physical experiments.
The anisotropic skin friction in undulatory locomotion en-
ables snakes to slide tangentially with small friction, whereas
large friction arises against lateral slips. This unique property
has been leveraged to develop various snake robots. In [15], [16],
[17], [18], and [19], snake robots were developed using passive
wheels, which are an extreme implementation of anisotropic
skin friction; the friction of the passive wheels is ideally zero
in the rolling direction and nonzero in the lateral direction.
Active wheels were also incorporated in snake robots for ad-
ditional actuation dimensions [20], [21]. One typical limitation
of wheeled robots is the limited types of terrain that they can
navigate. Several studies have been conducted to overcome this
limitation. In [22], [23], and [24], snake robots with passive
wheels have been developed to traverse parallel or nonparallel
planes at different heights. Active wheels have also been used
to enable snake robots to climb steep stairs [25]. In addition, a
passive-wheeled snake robot was developed to open and pass
through self-closing doors [26]. Some studies have employed
partial ground contacts to eliminate kinematic constraints of
wheels and enable more optimized motions [27], [28].
Meanwhile, efforts have been made to realize robotic snake
locomotion without using wheels by utilizing motion planning
and control approaches. Several studies developed wheel-less
snake robots, mainly based on the obstacle-aided controls [9],
[10], [11], [29], [30]. In these studies, snake robots were laterally
supported by surrounding obstacles during motion, resulting in
lateral slips being restrained by obstacles, while tangential slips
were allowed. As a result, the obstacles played a role similar to
that of the passive wheels and, consequently, facilitated forward
locomotion. To navigate a more complicated environment, a
locomotion strategy was developed by using virtual hoops and
exploiting a nonsliding gait [31]. The existence of compliance
in mechanisms or controllers was also found to be useful for
wheel-less snake robots to conform to the environment and to
enhance durability. In [10], [30], and [32], compliant controllers
were adopted to aid snake robots in navigating through complex
environments by complying the robot bodies with obstacles and
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2 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
pipes. In [30], [33], [34], and [35], a compliant robot skin was
used to increase the surface friction and enhance the durability
of the mechanism [36].
Undulatory locomotion becomes more challenging when the
environment lacks obstacles for lateral interaction. In this con-
text, biological snakes have been observed to utilize nonuniform
ground contacts to achieve forward and backward locomo-
tion [12], [37] and sidewinding [13], [14]. For instance, snakes
generate rapid forward motion by lifting the side edges of their
body curves, producing a sinus-lifting motion [12]. In contrast,
for backward locomotion, the center-lifting motion has been
observed in Cerastes vipera [37]. During sidewinding, the body
sections between the leftmost and rightmost edges of the body
curve are alternately in and out of ground contact [13], [14]. The
nonuniform ground contacts have been shown to enhance energy
efficiency in a dynamic analysis [38]. Inspired by these find-
ings, researchers have demonstrated wheel-less snake-robots’
undulatory locomotion on flat ground by utilizing nonuniform
ground contacts [13], [14], [39]. The desired ground contacts
for these robots were drawn from observations of biological
snakes or mechanics-based numerical analyses. Subsequently,
the contacts were physically achieved by individual controls of
a serial chain of rigid motors that swing laterally or vertically.
The undulation was realized by lateral rotations, whereas ground
contacts were controlled by vertical rotations. In most prior
studies on undulatory snake robot locomotion on flat ground,
only sidewinding was demonstrated, whereas forward loco-
motion was barely realized. This could be mostly because, in
sidewinding, the ground friction constitutes the direct traction,
i.e., the locomotion is toward the direction of the friction force.
However, the forward locomotion is more complicated because
the robot should reverse the friction.
In the present study, we focus on realizing undulatory loco-
motion of a snake robot on flat ground in various directions,
including forward, backward, and sideways, without using pas-
sive wheels. We aim at finding a simple control principle to
achieve the desired contact distributions for undulatory snake
locomotion, which produces more fluent locomotion than the
conventional active contact control. A critical factor whose effect
has not been fully clarified in previous studies is the snake’s
body compliance, which exists not only in bending but also in
torsion [40]. We found that body compliance combined with
vertical and torsional body tension greatly simplified the control
complexity for undulatory snake locomotion. More precisely,
the deflection under gravity, resulting from body compliance and
tension, naturally yields the contact distributions required for the
undulatory snake locomotion. The contributions and research
findings of this study could be listed as follows.
1) A convex optimization is presented to calculate the
ground-contact force distributions for the undulatory
snake locomotions in arbitrary moving directions. This
approach is capable of producing force distributions for
forward and backward locomotion as well as sidewind-
ing. Interestingly, the force distributions generated by our
method align well with the ground contacts observed in
biological snakes exhibiting sinus lifting, center lifting,
and sidewinding locomotion, respectively.
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2) Another convex optimization is proposed to calculate the
contact normal force distributions for a compliant snake
model under arbitrary body tensions. The resulting contact
normal forces for uniform body tensions in vertical bend-
ing and axial torsion are similar to the contact normal
forces calculated by the first optimization for forward
locomotion and sidewinding, respectively.
3) The results of the proposed optimizations suggest that the
undulatory snake locomotions toward various moving di-
rections can be achieved by combining a planar undulation
with two simple actuations, i.e., uniform vertical bending
and uniform axial twist. In detail, we found the following.
a) An upward vertical bending combined with planar
undulation results in sinus-lifting forward locomotion.
b) A downward vertical bending combined with planar
undulation results in center-lifting backward locomo-
tion.
c) An axial twist combined with a planar undulation
causes a leftward or rightward sidewinding depending
on the twist direction.
The proposed theories and actuations were successfully val-
idated through dynamic simulations and physical experiments.
Forward and backward locomotion, as well as sidewinding, were
achieved without the use of wheels. Notably, our experiments
demonstrated a smooth sinus-lifting forward locomotion with-
out relying on frictional anisotropy. This is particularly notewor-
thy, as previous studies had suggested that frictional anisotropy
was essential for efficient sinus-lifting locomotion [38], [41],
making our findings a significant contribution to the field.
The rest of this article is organized as follows. The convex
optimization approach for calculating the contact force distri-
butions of undulatory snake locomotion in various moving di-
rections is proposed in Section II. Subsequently, another convex
optimization to compute the contact forces for the compliant
snake model with body tension is formulated in Section III.
Dynamic simulations and physical experiments to verify lo-
comotion control by uniform body tensions are presented in
Sections IV and V, respectively. Finally, Section VI concludes
this article.
II. CONTACT FORCE DISTRIBUTION OF UNDULATORY SNAKE
LOCOMOTION
This section presents a convex optimization approach for
calculating ground-contact force distributions for undulatory
snake locomotion in an arbitrary direction. First, the kinematic
model of the undulatory motion is described, and then a convex
optimization framework is derived to calculate the contact force
distributions that satisfy the force and moment equilibrium,
without considering specific actuation systems. A discussion of
the calculated contact forces in relation to previous studies on
biological snakes is presented.
A. Kinematic Modeling of Undulatory Snake Locomotion
Let L ∈ R and s ∈ [0, L] denote the snake length and arc-
length parameter, respectively, where s runs from the head
(s = 0) to the tail (s = L). A usual configuration representation
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HA: ROBOTIC SNAKE LOCOMOTION EXPLOITING BODY COMPLIANCE AND UNIFORM BODY TENSIONS
Fig. 1. Definition of body frame on snake body.
Fig. 2. Shapes of snake body sampled over a cycle of undulation. Head is on
the upper side, and θ is the curving angle between two inflection points.
for continuum mechanisms [42], [43], [44] is utilized that con-
sists of the body frame along with the body curve as functions of
s. Defining R(s) ∈ SO(3) as the body frame of the infinitesimal
length segment at s, the 3-D body curvature vector u(s) ∈ R3
satisfies
R (s) = R(s)[u(s)]
where (·) denotes the derivative with respect to s, and [·]
represents the 3 × 3 skew-symmetric matrix representation of
a 3-D vector, which is defined as follows:
⎡ ⎤
0 −r3 r2
[r] = ⎣ r3 0 −r1 ⎦ (2)
−r2 r1 0
for r = [r1 r2 r3 ]T ∈ R3 . Equation (1) can be understood using
the standard rigid-body motion equation, [u] = R−1 Ṙ, where
u is the angular velocity vector expressed in the body frame,
and the upper dot denotes the time derivative [45]. Equation (1)
is given when the time derivative is replaced with the arc-length
derivative.
Next, we define the frame R(s) along the body length. Since
the choice of R(s) is arbitrary, we select a frame with physically
interpretable axes for our later analyses. We define the frame
R(s) such that its x-axis is tangentially aligned with the body
curve, and its z-axis is perpendicular to the ground (see Fig. 1).
The body curve is denoted by p(s) ∈ R3 , which satisfies the
following equation:
p (s) = −R(s)êx
where êx = [1 0 0]T ∈ R3 . A negative sign appears here because
s runs in the negative x-direction of R(s).
The undulatory snake locomotion considered in this study is
illustrated in Fig. 2, where the motion is assumed to be planner
with a negligible z-directional deflection. Here, the curvature is
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3
Fig. 3. Ideal follow-the-leader path (dashed line) and snake body (solid line)
on the path at a time instant. The snake body moves along a path heading toward
the positive y-direction of the plane.
a sinusoidal function with a period of 2L/3 and the time period
is τ ∈ R. The resulting curve angle between the two inflection
points is denoted by θ ∈ R, as shown in the figure. The length
period was chosen for the body curve to include at least two
inflection points. In this case, the curvature function u(s) at
time t ∈ R is given by
⎡ ⎤
0
u(s) = ⎣ 0 ⎦ ∈ R3 (4)
3πθ 3π(s−vtan t)
2L sin L
(1) where vtan ∈ R is defined as vtan = 2L/3τ , the physical meaning
of which will be explained later. The shape and location of the
snake model are calculated by solving the ordinary differential
equations (ODEs) (1)–(3) for u(s) in (4), when the head pose
(R(0), p(0)) is given as the initial condition.
B. Contact Force Computation for Desired Velocity
A convex minimization method for calculating the contact
force distributions for various moving directions and speeds can
be derived based on the force and moment equilibrium of the
snake body. We define variables for ideal follow-the-leader loco-
motion and express nonideal locomotion in terms of the defined
variables. Subsequently, convex minimization was formulated
to calculate the contact force distribution for general nonideal
locomotion.
1) Ideal Follow-the-Leader Locomotion: In the follow-the-
leader locomotion, the head of the snake moves forward along a
path, while the rest of the body follows the head [46], [47]. An
ideal situation is depicted in Fig. 3, where the tangent velocity
remains constant and the lateral velocity is zero for each point of
the body. The constant tangent velocity is 2L/3τ (= vtan ), which
is the length period over the time period.
(3)
The shape of the snake at time t is given as a segment of the
path with a length of L, as illustrated in Fig. 3. In the figure,
the snake head departs from the plane origin at t = 0 and travels
along the path at a speed of vtan . The principal direction of motion
is toward the positive y-direction of the plane. The head frame
R(0) at time t is determined by aligning its x-axis with the path.
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4 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS

Consequently, the head pose at time t is given by p(s) = pideal (s) + v drift t. (14)
R(0) = exp([êz ]α(vtan t)) (5) The acceleration a(s) ∈ R3 can be obtained by differentiating
⎡ ⎤ (13) and is given as follows:
 vtan t cos α(σ)
pideal (0) = ⎣ sin α(σ) ⎦ dσ (6) a(s) = aideal (s). (15)
0 0
The velocity of the center of mass, v c = [vc,x vc,y 0]T ∈ R3 , is
where
given by
π θ 3πσ
α(σ) = − cos . (7) v c = v c,ideal + v drift . (16)
2 2 L
The angle α(σ) represents the direction of the path, where σ is Note that the term v drift determines the moving direction and
the length parameter coordinated along the path. The calculation speed of the snake’s locomotion. If the y-component of v drift is
of α(σ) involves integration of the z-component of u(s) in (4) negative, then the forward velocity of the snake is lower than
for s ∈ [0, σ] at t = 0. The rotation R(·) is not subscripted as that in the ideal case. If the y-component of v drift completely
pideal (·) because it remains identical in nonideal cases, which cancels the ideal forward velocity and the x-component of v drift
will be discussed later. Once R(0) and pideal (0) are calculated, is nonzero, the snake moves laterally, resulting in sidewinding.
the body frame R(s) and body shape pideal (s) are then computed 3) Convex Minimization for Contact Force Calculation: Let
by solving the ODEs (1)–(3), given the initial values R(0) and N (s) ∈ R denote the distributed ground-contact normal force at
pideal (0) in (5)–(6). The resulting R(s) and pideal (s) are given s. Then, the force and moment equilibria are derived by equating
by the time derivatives of the linear and angular momenta to the net
force and moment, respectively
R(s) = exp ([êz ]α(vtan t − s)) (8)
⎡ ⎤ 
 vtan t−s cos α(σ) d L
v(s)ρ(s)ds
pideal (s) = ⎣ sin α(σ) ⎦ dσ. (9) dt 0
0 0  L
= −μN (s)v̂(s) + N (s)êz − gρ(s)êz ds ∈ R3 (17)
In this case, the velocity of the center of mass is given by the 0
following length integration:  L
d
 (p(s) × v(s)) ρ(s)ds
1 L dt 0
v c,ideal = v ideal (s)ρ(s)ds ∈ R3 (10) 
m 0 L
= p(s) × (−μN (s)v̂(s) + N (s)êz − gρ(s)êz ) ds ∈ R3
where ρ(s) ∈ R is the linear density function (i.e., mass per 0
length), v ideal (s) ∈ R3 is the local velocity of the body at s, and (18)
L
m ∈ R is the total mass calculated by m = 0 ρ(s)ds. The local
where μ ∈ R is the ground friction coefficient, g ∈ R is the
velocity v ideal (s) is derived as the time derivative of pideal (s) in
gravitational acceleration, and v̂(s) ∈ R3 is the unit vector of
the form
v(s) defined as v̂(s) = v(s)/v(s). Here, the Coulomb fric-
v ideal (s) = vtan R(s)êx . (11) tion model was used without accounting for the stiction effect.
The terms −μN (s)v̂(s), N (s)êz , and −gρ(s)êz correspond to
If ρ(s) is a constant function, the forward velocity (i.e., the friction, ground contact, and gravity forces, respectively. By
y-component of v c,ideal ) remains constant over time, whereas the time derivatives on the left sides, (17) and (18) become
the lateral velocity (i.e., x-component of v c,ideal ) oscillates peri-
 L
odically around 0.
a(s)ρ(s)ds
The time derivative of (11) yields the acceleration aideal (s) ∈ 0
R3 . Note that each point of the body moves along the negative  L
direction of s at a speed of vtan . Applying the chain rule as = −μN (s)v̂(s) + N (s)êz − gρ(s)êz ds (19)
ds = −vtan dt and substituting (1), the acceleration is obtained 0
as follows:  L

2
(p(s) × a(s)) ρ(s)ds
aideal (s) = −vtan R(s)[u(s)]êx . (12) 0
 L
2) Nonideal Locomotion: We consider a nonideal case in = p(s) × (−μN (s)v̂(s) + N (s)êz − gρ(s)êz ) ds.
which the snake model exhibits positional drift from the follow- 0
the-leader path. In this case, the velocity differs from v ideal (s). (20)
Letting v drift = [vdrift,x vdrift,y 0]T ∈ R3 denotes the drift veloc-
The distributed contact normal force N (s) is a function of s,
ity, the velocity v(s) ∈ R3 and the body curve p(s) ∈ R3 are
which can be considered as an infinite-dimensional variable.
given by
Thus, there exist infinitely many candidates for N (s) that satisfy
v(s) = v ideal (s) + v drift (13) the finite number of equations (19) and (20). To obtain a smooth

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HA: ROBOTIC SNAKE LOCOMOTION EXPLOITING BODY COMPLIANCE AND UNIFORM BODY TENSIONS 5

solution, we consider the following minimization:

 L 2
dN (s)
min ds (21)
N (s) 0 ds
subject to (19) and (20) and
N (s) ≥ 0. (22)
In practice, this minimization is solved numerically by vec-
torizing the function N (s) through arc-length discretization
and using the finite-difference approximation of dNds(s) . The
moment and force equilibria (19) and (20) become six linear
equality constraints in the vector space, and the inequality con-
straint N (s) ≥ 0 induces a lower bound on every discretized
element of N (s). Finally, the problem is reduced to a standard
quadratic programming (QP), which is a convex minimization
of a quadratic objective subject to a set of linear constraints.
We used the quadprog(·) function in MATLAB, whereas any
other convex optimization solver could attain the same global
minimizer.

C. Observations of Contact Force Distribution for Desired

Velocity
We solved the minimization (21) and observed the resulting
contact force distributions for different movement directions.
The contact force distributions were computed for various mov-
ing directions by setting v c differently in (16) or equivalently
by setting v drift differently. More precisely, the following points
need to be considered.
1) For forward locomotion, vc,y was set positive, and vdrift,x
was set to zero.
2) For backward locomotion, vc,y was set negative, and vdrift,x
was set to zero.
3) For sidewinding, vc,y was set to zero, and vdrift,x was given
nonzero values.
Note that an arbitrary diagonal moving direction can also be
accommodated in our contact force computation by choosing
nonzero x- and y-velocities. Based on the length and weight
distributions of biological snakes reported in [48] and [49], we
selected a representative snake model of 1 m in length and 1 kg
in mass. The time period τ and the curving angle θ were chosen
as τ = 1.5 s and θ = 180◦ , and the linear density ρ(s) was as-
sumed to be constant, that is, ρ(s) = 1 kg/m. The gravitational
acceleration was g = 9.8 m/s2 and the friction coefficient was
μ = 0.5.
The results are shown in Fig. 4. Here, vc,y = 0.15 m/s for for-
ward locomotion, vc,y = −0.15 m/s for backward locomotion,
and vc,y = 0 m/s and vdrift,x = 0.3 m/s for rightward sidewind-
ing. During forward locomotion, as depicted in Fig. 4(a), the
contact normal force concentrates at the points on the snake
where the curvature direction changes. This finding is consis-
tent with the observation of sinus-lifting motion in biological
snakes reported in [12]. It was noted that snakes contact the
ground at the inflection points of the body curve while moving
forward. In backward locomotion, as illustrated in Fig. 4(b), the
contact normal force distribution concentrates at the leftmost
or rightmost edges of the body curve, which is the opposite
Fig. 4. Intermediate snapshots of snake motions and corresponding contact
normal force distributions over a half cycle of undulation in (a) forward lo-
comotion, (b) backward locomotion, and (c) over two cycles of undulation in
sidewinding. The time instants of the motions are indicated by transparency,
where the curves become more opaque over time. The color bars represent the
force values. The force unit is N/m.
of the distribution in forward locomotion. This motion, termed
center lifting, has recently been observed in biological snakes,
as reported in [37]. This contact distribution can be utilized for
snake robots to achieve backward locomotion or, from a different
perspective, forward locomotion with reversed undulation. The
contact normal force distribution calculated for sidewinding is
shown in Fig. 4(c). Once again, this distribution agrees with
the observation of biological snake sidewinding reported in [13]
and [14], where the contacts appeared as diagonal lines on the
ground.
III. UNIFORM TENSION ACTUATION FOR SNAKE LOCOMOTIONS
To make use of the force distributions calculated in Section
II, snake robots must dynamically control their contact force
distribution while undulating. However, this simultaneous con-
trol of contact force distribution and body curvature may require
significant control effort. It would be beneficial to find a simpler
actuation law for undulatory snake locomotion that demands

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6 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS

less control attention. Given that robots have limited degrees of

freedom, we aim to identify a low-dimensional actuation that can
closely reproduce the contact normal force distributions derived
in Section II.
A critical factor that has not been fully discussed in previous
studies on snake-robot control is vertical and torsional body
compliances. In this study, we show that control complexity
can be greatly reduced by exploiting body compliance. More
precisely, the body deflection resulting from body compliance
and gravity naturally leads to the desired contact distribution
under appropriate body tension constantly induced over the
whole body. In the following sections, we examine the internal
moments of the snake model and suggest a simple actuation law
for undulatory snake locomotion.

A. Observations of Internal Moments

In general, the internal moment during locomotion refers to
the actuation torques of snake robots to generate the motion.
For example, in the case of a snake robot built using multiple
motors, the actuation torques of the motors correspond to the
internal moments at their locations on the robot’s body.
It has been reported that the snake’s vertebrae can bend and
twist [40]. The dominant actuation during undulatory locomo-
tion is lateral bending, whereas actuation in another direction
(i.e., vertical bending or axial twist) causes a nonuniform contact
normal force distribution. In this section, we will analyze the
torsional and vertical bending moments to focus on the contact
normal force distribution, whereas the lateral bending moment
will not be discussed.
The internal moment can be calculated by integrating along
the arc length using the Cosserat rod theory [50]. This theory
provides a set of differential equations that can be used to cal-
culate the internal moments and forces for given external loads.
Let m(s) ∈ R3 denotes the internal moment at s expressed in
body frame R(s). The x- and y-components of m(s) correspond
to the torsional and vertical bending moments, respectively.
Applying the Cosserat rod theory to the snake model yields
Fig. 5. (a) Torsional moments [x-component of m(s)] and (b) vertical
bending moments [y-component of m(s)] at 12 different time instants in an
undulatory cycle of forward locomotion. The time instants were uniformly
distributed over an undulatory cycle as ti = i−1
12 τ . In (b), the last six curves are
superimposed on the first six curves, which indicates that the vertical bending
moment repeats every half undulatory cycle.
undulation parameters as those used for the forward locomo-
tion, backward locomotion, and sidewinding in Section II-C.
The moments for forward locomotion are plotted in Fig. 5. In
Fig. 5(b), the bending moments are mostly positive over the
entire length of the snake model, whereas the torsional moments
are distributed symmetrically around 0. The moment curves for
the sidewinding are given in Fig. 6. In this case, as opposed to
forward locomotion, the torsional moments are mostly negative,
whereas the bending moments vary over time in a complicated
manner.

m τ [u] [] m B. Contact Force Distribution for Uniform Tension

= −
n f 03×3 [u] n The internal moments for forward locomotion and sidewind-
where τ (s) ∈ R3 and f (s) ∈ R3 denote the external distributed
moment and force acting on the snake model at s, respectively,
and n(s) ∈ R3 denotes the internal force at s. Again, (·)
denotes the derivative with respect to s. These variables
are expressed in the body frame R(s). Assuming no axial
compression or elongation, the strain vector  ∈ R3 is given
as  = [−1 0 0]T because s is coordinated along the negative
x-direction of R(s). Note that τ (s) = 0 because the ground
contact only exerts force without any torque. By substituting
τ (s) = 0 and f (s) = RT (s)(−μN (s)v̂(s) + N (s)êz −
gρ(s)êz ) into (23) and integrating (23) with the free-end
boundary condition m(0) = n(0) = 0, the internal moment
m(s) is computed over the entire length.
We computed m(s) for different moving directions at mul-
tiple instants over a cycle of undulation. We used the same
(23)
ing exhibit sign biases, which can be used to derive a simple
control strategy for these motions.
Ideally, the internal moment should be entirely controllable
throughout the snake’s length, with the moment functions, as
shown in Figs. 5 and 6, for forward locomotion and sidewind-
ing, respectively. However, if only low-dimensional actuation is
allowed, a constant moment can be applied to each axis over the
entire body length and undulation cycle. Based on the observed
signs of the internal moments, we hypothesize that uniform
tension in vertical bending over the entire body can produce
forward locomotion, while uniform torsion along the entire body
can produce sidewinding. To test this hypothesis, we will com-
pute the contact normal force distributions for uniform tensions
and compare them with the force distributions, as presented in
Section II-C. The contact normal force distribution for a uniform
tension can be computed through the following steps:

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HA: ROBOTIC SNAKE LOCOMOTION EXPLOITING BODY COMPLIANCE AND UNIFORM BODY TENSIONS
Fig. 6. (a) Torsional moments [x-component of m(s)] and (b) vertical
bending moments [y-component of m(s)] at 12 different time instants in an
undulatory cycle of sidewinding locomotion. The time instants were uniformly
distributed over an undulatory cycle as ti = i−1
12 τ .
1) consider an elastic rod as the snake model;
2) apply a uniform tension as a rod precurvature;
3) compute the body shape and contact normal force distri-
bution through energy minimization.
Note that this method is limited to static analysis of vertical
deflection and does not consider the dynamic effect of motion.
The full dynamics of the system will be considered in our later
dynamic simulations.
Let us consider the snake model as an elastic rod of circular
cross section with a diameter d ∈ R, bending and torsional
stiffnesses kb ∈ R and kt ∈ R, and radial stiffness kr ∈ R.
Assuming linear elasticity, the body shape is computed using
the following energy minimization:
 L
min 0 (s) + r (s)ds (24)
ux (s),uy (s),R(0),p(0) 0 of u0 and z-component of p(0), respectively, and Ψ is the com-
subject to (1)–(3), where r (s) is the linear density of the
potential energy for radial displacement, and 0 (s) is the linear
density of the potential energy for vertical bending, axial torsion,
and z-displacement, which are given by
1
2 kr ( 2
d
− pz )2 if pz (s) < d2
r =
0 otherwise
and
1 1
0 = kb (uy − ûy )2 + kt (ux − ûx )2 + ρgpz .
2 2
Here, ux (s), uy (s), ûx ∈ R, and ûy ∈ R are the torsional cur-
vature (i.e., twist rate), vertical bending curvature, torsional
precurvature, and vertical bending precurvature, respectively,
and pz (s) is the z-component of p(s).
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7
Similar to the previous minimization in (21), this can be solved
by discretizing ux (s) and uy (s) over s ∈ [0, L] and using the
exponential coordinate of SO(3) as
R(0) = R̃ exp([u0 ]) (27)
where u0 ∈ R3 is a 3-D vector and R̃ ∈ SO(3) is a constant
rotation matrix about which the exponential coordinate is de-
fined. Finally, the problem is reduced to a vector-space optimiza-
tion. Note that the problem is not convex because (1)–(3) and
(27) are nonlinear. Still, a nonlinear optimization solver can be
applied, while it can be stuck in a local minimum or numerically
unstable around the boundary of the conditional function (25).
Because we are interested in the behavior of the snake model
around the planar configuration (i.e., ux (s) = uy (s) = 0), an
approximate but robust and efficient approach to solving this
minimization is to linearize the system around the planar con-
figuration. The linearization of (1)–(3) and (27) yields a set of
linear equations between the vectorized pz (s) and the vectorized
ux (s) and uy (s). Referring to a formulation similar to that found
in [51], the linearization is expressed as follows:
u
x
z = Φ
p + Ψ1 u0 + Ψ2 p(0) (28)
u
y
where u  x, u
 y , and p
z are the vectorizations of the corresponding
variables, and Φ, Ψ1 , and Ψ2 are the linear maps. The x- and
y-components of p(0) determine the location of the snake on the
x- and y-plane but are invariant to the potential energy. Thus,
they are set constant and only the z-component remain unknown
in the energy minimization. By choosing R̃ as the head rotation
of the planar configuration, we can additionally eliminate the
z-component of u0 from the unknowns because the rotation of
the snake model about the z-axis is invariant to the potential
energy. In fact, the z-column of Ψ1 and the x- and y-columns
of Ψ2 are zero because px (0), py (0), and u0,z are invariant to
pz (s). Overall, the linearized system is reduced to
⎡ ⎤
u0x
u

z = Φ x + Ψ ⎣u0y ⎦
p (29)
u
y
p0z
where u0x , u0y ∈ R and p0z ∈ R are the x- and y-components
bined linear map, which is a concatenation of nonzero columns
of Ψ1 and Ψ2 . Minimization with the linearized system is a
convex minimization, whereas the objective is not a quadratic
function because of the conditional function r (s) in (25). To
use standard QP solvers for their robustness, we cast r (s) as an
unconditionally quadratic function by introducing an additional
(25) minimization variable q(s) ∈ R such that
1
r = kr (q − pz )2 (30)
2
(26) where q(s) is bounded by
d
q(s) ≥ . (31)
2
The minimization, including q(s) and (31), is equivalent to the
original minimization. Variable q(s) approaches pz (s) as closely
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8 IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
Fig. 7. Contact normal force distributions given (a) upper tension, (b) lower
tension, and (c) torsional tension. The color bars represent the force values. The
force unit is N/m.
as possible by minimization. More precisely, q(s) converges to
q(s) = pz (s) if pz (s) ≥ d2 , whereas q(s) saturates at q(s) = d2
if pz (s) < d2 . Thus, in both cases, the function value of (30) is
identical to that of the original function (25). Replacing (25)
by (30) and inducing the upper bound of q(s) in (31), the
minimization becomes a QP with respect to u  x, u
 z , and q
, where
q
 is the vectorization of q(s).
Once the minimization is solved, the contact normal force
distribution is obtained from the linear elasticity as follows:
N (s) = kr (pz (s) − q(s)) .
C. Observations of Contact Force Distribution Under Uniform
Tension
The body shapes and contact normal force distributions were
computed by minimizing the vertical bending and torsional
tensions, as shown in Fig. 7. The mass and length were chosen
as L = 1 m and m = 1 kg, respectively, the cross-sectional
diameter was chosen to be d = 0.04 m, and the linear density
was assumed to be constant, that is, ρ(s) = 1 kg/m. To select
the elastic properties kb , kt , and kr of the snake model, we
referred to the approximation of the snake’s elasticity pro-
posed in [52]. The snake’s body was modeled utilizing silicone
rubber whose Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio are E =
10 MPa and ν = 0.5, respectively. Accordingly, the bending
and torsional stiffnesses were chosen as kb = 1.2566 N · m2 and
kt = 0.8378 N · m2 , respectively, which were computed using
kb = EI and kt = EI/(1 + ν), where I = πd4 /64. The radial
stiffness was empirically chosen as kr = 10−4 N/m2 and the
gravitational acceleration was g = 9.8 m/s2 .
We want to highlight the resemblance between the force
distributions, as shown in Figs. 4 and 7. By applying uniform
tension in the vertical bending upward with ûy = 0.2618 m−1 ,
we obtained a force distribution that closely resembles the
forward locomotion, as depicted in Fig. 4(a). Conversely, when
we used a lower vertical tension of ûy = −0.2618 m−1 , the
resulting force distribution was similar to the backward loco-
motion in Fig. 4(b). Finally, by introducing a uniform torsion
with ûx = −0.2618 m−1 , we obtained a contact normal force
distribution that resembles the sidewinding in Fig. 4(c). In all
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Fig. 8. Undulatory locomotion control using uniform body tensions:
(a) forward locomotion, (b) backward locomotion, and (c) sidewinding. The
red arrows indicate the locomotion directions. The lower and upper sides of the
body are colored differently to visualize the body twist. The 3-D body shapes
in the rightmost figures were computed by the proposed optimization.
three cases, the bending and twisting angles across the snake
body were 15◦ .
We can conclude that the compliant snake model with uniform
body tension exhibits the contact normal force distributions
(32) required for undulatory snake locomotion in various moving
directions, and that the moving direction can be controlled by
uniform tension. This is illustrated in Fig. 8. This control scheme
was further validated by the dynamic simulations presented in
Section IV.
D. Body Compliance Versus Uniform Tension
The contact normal force distributions determined by the
minimization process, as outlined in Section III-B, correspond
to the result of the balance between the body compliance and
the body tension. When the body is substantially stiff with
respect to the tension applied or the tension is considerably
large with respect to the given body compliance, the force is
sharply concentrated at specific locations. In contrast, if the
body is more compliant or the tension is smaller, the force
is distributed evenly. A desired force distribution can be ob-
tained by adjusting the body tension according to the body
compliance. In general, the more compliant the body is, the
larger the tension must be to compensate for larger gravitational
deflections.
As an example, Fig. 9 demonstrates how the force distribution
changes as the body tension and body compliance vary from
those used in Fig. 7(a). In Fig. 9(a), only the body tension was
triplicated, resulting in a more concentrated force distribution
than in Fig. 7(a). In Fig. 9(b), only the body compliance was
triplicated (i.e., the body stiffness was decreased by one-third),
resulting in a more evenly distributed force distribution. Finally,
when both the body tension and body compliance were tripli-
cated [see Fig. 9(c)], the force remained almost identical to that
in Fig. 7(a).
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HA: ROBOTIC SNAKE LOCOMOTION EXPLOITING BODY COMPLIANCE AND UNIFORM BODY TENSIONS 9

Fig. 9. Contact normal force distributions given upper tensions: (a) triplicated
body tension, (b) triplicated body compliance (one-third body stiffness), and
(c) triplicated body tension + triplicated body compliance. The color bars
represent the force values, and the force unit is N/m. The color-to-force mapping
is the same for all three cases, which is also identical to that in Fig. 7(a). Darker
red colors are used for forces exceeding the force range of Fig. 7(a).

IV. DYNAMIC SIMULATIONS

In Section III, we concluded that the compliant snake model
under uniform tension exhibits forward locomotion, backward
locomotion, and sidewinding. This suggests that the direction
of undulatory locomotion can be controlled by uniform tension.
However, this argument is still a hypothesis, as the force dis-
tribution calculated in Section II was not verified in reverse to Fig. 10. Dynamic simulations of snake robot given (a) upper tension, (b) lower
tension, and (c) torsional tension.
achieve the input motion. Additionally, the mechanical analy-
ses, as presented in Sections II and III, rely on the following
assumptions.
1) The friction forces lie on Coulomb friction boundaries.
Uniform tensions were modeled as biased neutral angles of
2) No dynamic effect is considered along the z-axis.
the springs. The bending neutral angles were biased upward or
3) The contact force calculation for the uniform tensions is
downward, expecting forward or backward locomotion, respec-
statics.
tively, whereas the torsional neutral angles were axially rotated,
A set of dynamics’ simulations was conducted for a snake-
expecting sidewinding. The angle biases in each of the springs
robot model to further verify our argument. The full Coulomb
for forward locomotion and sidewinding were chosen to be 2°,
friction model with the stiction effect was incorporated into the
and those for backward locomotion were chosen as 1°.
simulations, and the dynamic effects in all three dimensions
As previously discussed in Section III-D, the bending and
were considered. For the dynamic simulations, we used srLib, an
twist angles were crucial for achieving the desired contact
open-source Lie group-based multibody dynamics solver. The
distributions. Note that the tensions applied to the continuum
snake-robot model was an open serial chain connecting 15 links
snake model in Section III-C were 15◦ for both bending and
with 14 active position-controlled motors and 14 passive springs.
twist, which corresponds to approximately 1◦ of angle bias
The motors swang laterally, and the springs were vertically
for each spring in the snake-robot model. We tested various
bending and axially twisting.
angles around this value and determined the optimal angles for
The undulatory locomotion was realized by periodic joint
achieving fluent motions. Deviations from these angles resulted
motions with shifted phases, given by
in slower locomotion speeds and/or larger lateral oscillations
 due to the complex ground contacts of multiple links.
◦ 2πt 3π
θi (t) = 60.59 sin + i (33) The resulting motions are illustrated in Fig. 10, where the
1.5 14
robot moved forward and backward for the upper and lower
where θi (t) denotes the angle of joint i at time t. The parameters bending neutral angle biases, respectively, and left and right
were chosen such that the curving angle was approximately 180◦ for the clockwise and counterclockwise torsional neutral angle
and the time period of the motion was 1.5 s. biases, respectively. The average velocities of forward locomo-
The robot had a mass of 1 kg, with each link weighing tion, backward locomotion, and sidewinding were 0.125 m/s,
1/15 kg. The linear spring models used in the simulation had 0.098 m/s, and 0.313 m/s, respectively. For identical undulatory
bending and torsional stiffnesses of 18.850 N·m and 12.566 N·m, frequencies, sidewinding was the most efficient in terms of
respectively. These parameters were derived as a discretization average velocity. Note that friction was isotropic in the simu-
of the continuum snake model, as discussed in Section III-C. lations. The efficiency of forward locomotion may increase for

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10
Fig. 11. Prototype snake mechanism. (a) Overview. (b) Joint structure. Signal
and power cables are omitted in (b). Grid size on the floor in (a) is 30 cm × 30 cm.
anisotropic friction, whereas the dynamic solver used for our
simulations supports only isotropic friction.
V. PHYSICAL EXPERIMENTS
The simulation results presented in Section IV were put into
test using a developed physical robot prototype.
A. Prototype Snake Robot
A snake-robot prototype is shown in Fig. 11(a). The robot
comprised elementary servo motors (MG996R), an Arduino
Nano board, urethane blocks, and 3-D-printed plastic brackets.
These were quickly available components that were chosen
for rapid experimental verification of the proposed locomotion
strategy. The robot was built as a connection of 15 servo motors,
where only 14 motors were position controlled, and the 15th
motor was attached as the last module for its equivalent mass and
friction properties. Each consecutive motor pair was connected
using a 3-D-printed plastic bracket and urethane block that was
flexible in bending and torsion, as illustrated in Fig. 11(b). The
robot was 1.21 m in length and 1.22 kg in mass, which was
slightly larger and heavier than the representative snake size
(i.e., 1 m and 1 kg), owing to its motor dimensions and mass.
The Arduino Nano board was attached to the eighth motor, and
the power and signal cables were routed on the top of the robot.
An external power source was used, and the main power cable
was placed in the middle of the robot and branched into each
motor.
The contact between the bare motor and the ground was
slippery. Thus, the lower body of each motor was covered with
insulation tape to increase the contact friction. To ensure the
absence of frictional anisotropy in the robot, the maximum static
friction forces between a motor and the ground were measured
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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ROBOTICS
Fig. 12. Experiment measuring static friction. (a) Experimental setup. (b) Pose
of motor for measuring tangential friction. (c) Pose of motor for measuring lateral
friction. The green arrows in (b) and (c) indicate the directions of pulling forces.
TABLE I
MAXIMUM STATIC FRICTION FORCES IN TANGENTIAL AND LATERAL
DIRECTIONS
separately in the tangential and lateral directions, as illustrated
in Fig. 12. To accomplish this, a force gauge was employed to
pull the motor using a string and rubber bands. The rubber bands
converted the pulling displacement to continuous force changes,
thereby enabling precise measurements. The measurement was
recorded at the point when the motor began to slide. To account
for the resolution of the force gauge, additional weights were
added to the motor to amplify the friction, resulting in a com-
bined mass of 450 g. Each direction was tested independently
three times, and the results are presented in Table I. The data
indicate that there is no significant difference in the friction
forces between the two directions.
B. Implementation of Uniform Tensions
An ideal hardware implementation of uniform bending or
twisting can be achieved using lower, upper, and helical tendon
routings. However, this requires sophisticated design and man-
ufacturing of module housings with embedded tendon paths,
which incurs significant cost and effort. In the present study,
our prototype robot was built as a minimum hardware imple-
mentation to validate the proposed locomotion control strategy.
Similar to the uniform tensions implemented as biased neutral
spring angles in the simulations, bending and twisting in the
physical experiments were implemented by prebending and
pretwisting the urethane blocks using rubber bands, respectively.
The bending and twisting induced by rubber bands are shown in
Fig. 13. The resulting bending and twist angles accumulated over
the robot were approximately 150°, 90°, and 90° for forward lo-
comotion, backward locomotion, and sidewinding, respectively.
These angles were empirically determined in order to achieve
the desired motion.
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HA: ROBOTIC SNAKE LOCOMOTION EXPLOITING BODY COMPLIANCE AND UNIFORM BODY TENSIONS
Fig. 13. Bending and twisting applied in experiments. (a) Upper bending.
(b) Lower bending. (c) Axial twist. Inset shows the rubber band routing for each
case. Grid size on the floor is 30 cm × 30 cm.
C. Motion Parameters
The motion parameters were slightly modified from those in
(33) because the motor rotations were observed to overshoot,
particularly at the tail part. The tail tended to strike the middle
of the body, occasionally pulling and entangling cables. This
may be due to the insufficient torque and imprecise position
control of the motors. Consequently, the sinusoidal amplitude
was reduced by 10% from (33), and the undulation time period
was increased to 2 s to compensate for the observed overshoot.
D. Results
The resulting motions are shown in Fig. 14 with semitrans-
parent motion snapshots. As expected, the robot demonstrated
forward locomotion, backward locomotion, and sidewinding for
upper bending, lower bending, and axial twisting, respectively.
Slight directional biases were observed, particularly in forward
locomotion, which were presumably associated with the asym-
metric hardware composition introduced by hand manufactur-
ing. The asymmetric hardware factors may include asymme-
try in the hand-cut urethane connections, misalignment of the
motors’ neutral angles, and asymmetric cable layout and cable
tensions. The average velocities were 0.101 m/s, 0.125 m/s,
and 0.236 m/s for forward locomotion, backward locomotion,
and sidewinding, respectively.
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11
Fig. 14. Experimental locomotion results for (a) upper tension, (b) lower ten-
sion, and (c) axial twist. Green arrows indicate the motion directions. Snapshots
were taken at every 7 s in (a) and (b) and every 3 s in (c). Grid size on the floor
is 30 cm × 30 cm.
Similar to simulation outcomes, the sidewinding achieved
the highest velocity, whereas the forward locomotion was less
efficient, and the backward locomotion was more efficient com-
pared with simulations. Several factors may contribute to the
differences between the simulation and physical experimental
results, including friction coefficient, robot length and mass,
robot compliance, bending and twist angles, and motor precision
and speed/torque limits. One potential cause of the asymmetric
S-shapes observed in Fig. 14(a) and (b) is inaccurate motor
control likely due to insufficient torque or inaccurate control.
Nonetheless, uniform tensions combined with planar undula-
tion successfully produced snake locomotion in the expected
directions.
Our locomotion method was effectively demonstrated in these
experiments using a prototype robot bent or twisted with rubber
bands. Although the proposed method reduces control com-
plexity significantly, more complicated mechanisms may be
necessary for adaptive bending and twist actuation.
VI. CONCLUSION
In this article, we demonstrated that undulatory snake loco-
motion in various moving directions can be achieved by body
compliance and vertical and torsional body tensions. A planar
undulation combined with upper or lower vertical tension gener-
ates forward or backward locomotion, whereas a planar undula-
tion with an axial twist yields rightward or leftward sidewinding
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12
depending on the twist direction. Two convex optimizations
were proposed and mutually compared: the first calculated the
contact force distribution for the desired moving direction, and
the second calculated that for a given body tension. The contact
distributions computed through the first optimization were con-
sistent with the biological snake-ground-contact distributions
reported in the literature. The second optimization suggested that
the body compliance and uniform body tension could naturally
achieve these contact distributions. The undulatory snake loco-
motion with uniform body tension was dynamically simulated
by implementing a compliant snake robot modeled with motors
and springs. This has been experimentally validated using a
prototype snake robot built using servo motors and flexible
urethane connections, which demonstrated forward locomotion,
backward locomotion, and sidewinding using uniform tensions.
The proposed locomotion method enables a range of snake loco-
motion with reduced control complexity, while it may introduce
higher design complexity for bending and twist actuation in
practice.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
The authors would like to thank Seong-il Kwon for his help on
robot development and experiments, Chaewon Kim and Armanc
Karakoyun for 3-D-printing robot components, and Veysi ADIN
for sharing expertise with regard to the electric circuit design.
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Junhyoung Ha (Member, IEEE) received the B.S.
and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical and aerospace engi-
neering from Seoul National University, Seoul, South
Korea, in 2008 and 2015, respectively.
From 2015 to 2018, he was a Postdoctoral Re-
searcher with Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard
Medical School. Since 2019, he has been a Senior Re-
searcher with the Center for Healthcare Robotics, AI
and Robotics Institute, Korea Institute of Science and
Technology (KIST), Seoul, South Korea. He is also
serving as an Associate Professor with the Division
of AI and Robot, KIST School, University of Science and Technology, Daejeon,
South Korea. His research interests include robot control, motion planning, and
deep learning.