A review on perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion for snake robots

Biological snakes can gracefully traverse a wide range of different and complex environments. Snake robots that can mimic this behaviour could be fitted with sensors and also transport tools to hazardous or confined areas that other robots and humans are unable to access. To carry out such tasks, snake robots must have a high degree of awareness of their surroundings (i.e. perception-driven locomotion) and be capable of efficient obstacle exploitation (i.e. obstacle-aided locomotion) to gain propulsion. These aspects are important to realise the large variety of possible snake robot applications in real-life operations such as fire-fighting, industrial inspection, search-and-rescue and more. In this paper, an elaborate review and discussion of the state-of-the-art, challenges and possibilities of perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion for snake robots is presented for the first time. Pertinent to snake robots, we focus on current strategies for obstacle avoidance, obstacle accommodation, and obstacle-aided locomotion. Moreover, we put obstacle-aided locomotion into the context of perception and mapping. To this end, we present an overview of relevant key technologies and methods within environment perception, mapping and representation that constitute important aspects of perception-driven obstacle-aided locomotion.