一种蛇形机器人蜿蜒运动的实现及环境适应性研究

生物蛇数量众多的脊椎骨以及无足的身体结构,使其形成了特殊的蜿蜒式前进步态,能够广泛适应于草地、沙漠和湖泊等起伏地形,这种节律性的运动方式被证明是由中枢模式发生器(CPG)控制的.利用Hopf振荡器的稳态特性建立了能够实现蛇形机器人蜿蜒步态的CPG步态控制网络,依据蛇形机器人的模型仿真器得到了控制蜿蜒运动的CPG网络参数,并利用该网络的输出蛇形机器人成功实现了前进.根据Hopf振荡器对控制参数突然变化的良好适应性,通过在线调整得到了新的输出.讨论了面对复杂环境时蛇形机器人转弯运动的实现以及改变蛇形机器人身体S波构形来提高其环境适应性的方法.在蛇形机器人样机上的实验证明了基于CPG的运动控制方法在蛇形机器人蜿蜒运动上的有效性.

Research on realization and environmental adaptability of serpentine locomotion for a snake robot

With a limbless body consisting of a large number of vertebrations, biological snakes form a specially rhythmic movement called serpentine locomotion, which makes themselves survive widely in rugged terrains, such as grasslands, deserts and lakes. It has been proved that the rhythmic movement pattern is controlled by a central pattern generator (CPG). Hopf oscillators featured by stable limit cycle are used to construct a CPG-based control network for achieving serpentine gait for a snake robot. By a simulator of a snake robot, preliminary parameters of the CPG network for its serpentine locomotion are obtained,and the snake robot achieves moving forward using these outputs. New output of the proposed CPG network is generated by on-line modifying parameters of the Hopf oscillators owing to its good adaptability to abrupt change of control parameters. The methods of a snake robot adapting to an unstructured environment by turning motion or changing its number of S-curve are discussed. Experiments on a snake robot prototype demonstrate the effectiveness of CPG-based control method in serpentine locomotion.