Concept
A snake arm is a class of bio-inspired robots that emulates the movement of a snake, with one point of attachment where the arm is anchored. Our goal is to design and fabricate an arm that best resembles the strength, fluidity, precision, and dexterity, of a snake, by maximizing our arm's degrees of freedom and payload capacity and ensuring mechanical compliance (minimizing "play").
Qualitative Requirements
Our vision of a snake arm can best be characterized as having multiple degrees of freedom, high flexibility, and thin diameter. This would allow easy access to confined spaces, such as nuclear reactor chambers and jet engines, making flexibility and dexterity integral factors of our design. Our snake arm must be able to precisely maneuver itself through a complex set of physical constraints if it is to successfully navigate a tight space. In addition, it must support a significant payload capacity in order for there to exist practical uses for such a device.
Applications
Snakearms have diverse applications, including, but not limited to, bomb difusal, reactor inspection, jet-engine borescope, and biomedical endoscopic robotics.
The Project Team
This project a research-oriented, and is by no means cookie-cutter. New innovations, ideas, suggestions, and research topics are the essence of this project. Team members contribute and develop practical robotics skill sets such as programming/algorithm development , CNC machining , and PCB design/testing. Some focus areas include, but are in no way limited to, applied control theory, Artificial Intelligence path planning, behavioral modeling and programming, and visual recognition.
