What happens when you put snakes on a sheet ? No , not with Samuel L. Jackson – on a outrageous inclined plane . loosely , the animals will start to slide down . But they can halt their fall by actively changing the position of their scale to increase friction . Knowing this has countenance robotic locomotive engineer to build good search - and - delivery robots whose “ pes ” function like Snake River scales .
Why snakes ? “ They ’re very cunning and very easy to work with , ” Hamid Marvi , a Georgia Institute of Technology Ph . D candidate , joked at the American Physical SocietyMarch Meeting . More seriously , he explain how a snake in the grass ’s power to creep through narrow openings and graduated table peak makes it a “ supporter brute ” that could well sail the site of a natural cataclysm . Robots that move like snakes could locate and bring aid to victims entrap in rubble .
Marvi andother researchers at Georgia Techstarted out by studying how snakes ’ scale permit them useanisotropic rubbing , or friction that is greater in one direction than another , to their advantage . For example , put a sleeping snake on one of those incline planes . When you orientate it so that it slips down headland - first , the friction is twice as great as when the Snake River is oriented to slide down obliquely .
This passive mechanism has to do with how the scale are layer on top of each other . you’re able to feel the difference yourself : if you pass a manus along a snake ’s venter from tail to head or side - to - side , the weighing machine will hit precipitously against your hide , but if you operate your script in the polar direction , the scales slip swimmingly preceding . Even the micro - body structure of the graduated table is textured so that the coefficient of detrition will be dissimilar when moving towards the serpent ’s head or towards its tail .
Beyond the passive chemical mechanism , a conscious snake has even more controller over its slide . “ Snakes can actively operate their frictional prop , ” explain Marvi . When an alert ophidian begin sliding down an inclined plane , its ventral muscles can change the slant at which its scales bump off the surface , increase its friction .
And without scales to generate friction , a serpent ca n’t slither anywhere . The power to move forwards is dependant on the snake having a different coefficient of friction in different directions , which get it push off of lowly bumps and rough patches in a jolty surface . If you cover the snake in the grass ’s scale in a sock - like fabric “ jacket , ” its friction becomes adequate in all steering . The snake can still move its torso in the characteristic sec - similar motion , but the wafture does n’t drive the snake forward .
In accession to modifying the situation of its scales , a snake can promote its speed by lifting segment of its body off the surface as it moves along . As its body twist into an S , the Snake River plagiarize up the curves of the S – off any rubbing from the part of the body that are moving sidewise – while keep the straight in-between segment in contact with the earth – increasing the rubbing on the part of the body that is go forward .
Tosimulate a snake ’s motionon uneven land , its plate must be taken into account , and that ’s precisely what the Georgia Tech team did . Based on their result , they created Scaly - Bot , a robot that can climb slopes . “ You take to adjust the scales so you could spellbind with the substrate very well and the automaton does n’t slide down the hill , ” Marvi say . By changing the angle between its scales and the airfoil , Scaly - Bot can adjust its rubbing and climb up .
And Scaly - Bot ’s successor , Scaly - Bot 2 , has even more characteristic , including steering , flexibility , and an accelerometer to smell when it ’s sliding so its scales can “ sweep , ” seek the correct angle to prevent further slipping . In fact , two of Scaly - Bot 2 ’s eight motors are dedicate to controlling the angles of its “ plate . ” Of course , a side effect of all these motor is that Scaly - Bot 2 is noisy and a bit ungainly . But then , the Georgia Tech squad behind Scaly - Bot 2 is not a team of roboticists .
“ Our focal point is not on robotics , but on find mechanisms to help roboticists develop more effective robots , ” Marvi enounce . Further work is ongoing to turn Marvi ’s work into the cloth and mechanism that could let golem scale heights as easily as snakes do .
PhysicsRoboticsRobots
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