Students hope robot snakes slither out of lab.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew
• Position: Robot Technology

* Students at Carnegie Mellon University laboratory are working on a family of robots that mimic the movement of snakes.

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Students and teachers at the biorobotics laboratory at CMU Robotics Institute see several applications for robots that that do not require wheels or legs to move.

"The best way to model a robot was to model it on nature, so we chose a snake," said undergraduate Sid Nangia.

Snakes can move through rocky areas, climb up poles, slither through crevices and even swim. The snake robot has demonstrated all these functions, students said.

The robot is actually a series of links, or a "modular chain of single degree of freedom units," that move in conjunction with each other. It can be switched from the forward movement most snakes use to a sidewinder motion desert snakes employ to move over sand.

One possible application includes reconnaissance and surveillance. A camera is installed at the head of the robot and a claw can also be attached to drag objects.

They could also crawl into the rubble of a collapsed building in a search-and-rescue scenario or climb up a pole or tree to allow operators to get a bird's eye view of a scene, he said.

A Pennsylvania power company recently asked students to...