XMSnakeRobot

XMSnakeRobot Why a Snake Robot? For hunting rats! Here in New Zealand we have rats etc, alien to these previously isolated islands, harming our much loved native bird populations including the national icon - the Kiwi. Think of a remote controlled small robot in the world of the rat and that world has mud, undergrowth and broken terrain where a snake form factor is worth trying. And we can get "bio-inspired" and realise that snakes are effective bio rat-hunters so it may be good to learn from them. This is an ambitious aim to build towards step by step with an indoor testbed first.

When I started this I thought snake robots were a regular thing in robotics and I would be adding value for rat hunting. As far as I can tell there is a lot of snake talk and not so much snake action. As in only a small number exist as one-off academic projects. This places this project more on the "cutting edge" than I expected which is a little scary-snake but also exciting that this can be something special.

Video "Snake Robot Goes Faster - Sideways!":

Video "Evolution of a Snake Robot":

Snake Robot structure with version01 electronics in place:

L to R ribs 03, 04, 05. Rib04 has the highest complexity because it includes the master Arduino Nano microcontroller.

Part of the "Creative Repurposing of Accessible Technologies" Project at the Manukau Institute of Technology in New Zealand. Here the Accessible Technologies are:

• Low cost Android SmartPhone or Android SmartWatch for the robot "brain"
• Arduino Nano microcontrollers for the robot "spinal cord"
• Bluetooth HC-05 module as the link between "spinal cord" and "brain"
• MG90 model aircraft servos - 20 of them.The snake has 10 segments each of which has servos for horizontal and vertical movement.

New in October 2018 is:

• Gait interpreter does interpolation between defined gait points for a smoother movement

New in June 2018 are:

• advances in "brain" coding with an improved basic movement "Gait" and simplified Gait coding
• power supply improvements

More details on problem solving at blog "HiTechFromLoTech":
https://hitechfromlotech.blogspot.co.nz/2017/12/xmsnakerobot-construction-completed.html