Motion planning of the double-link trident snake robot

This paper addresses the motion planning problem of the trident snake robot consisting of a triangular body equipped with 2-link branches with actuated joints. The kinematics of the robot are represented by a driftless control system referred to as body controlled. This system converts to joint controlled after applying a feedback transformation. A two step motion planning strategy has been proposed to provide the joint control of the robot. First, a constrained motion planning problem is solved for the body control, preventing the feedback from getting singular, second the joint control is achieved by combining the body control with the feedback. It has been shown that the former step can be accomplished using the imbalanced Jacobian motion planning algorithm. The motion planning strategy is illustrated by computer simulations.