Publication Date:
2014-10-11
Description:
Limbless organisms such as snakes can navigate nearly all terrain. In particular, desert-dwelling sidewinder rattlesnakes (Crotalus cerastes) operate effectively on inclined granular media (such as sand dunes) that induce failure in field-tested limbless robots through slipping and pitching. Our laboratory experiments reveal that as granular incline angle increases, sidewinder rattlesnakes increase the length of their body in contact with the sand. Implementing this strategy in a physical robot model of the snake enables the device to ascend sandy slopes close to the angle of maximum slope stability. Plate drag experiments demonstrate that granular yield stresses decrease with increasing incline angle. Together, these three approaches demonstrate how sidewinding with contact-length control mitigates failure on granular media.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Marvi, Hamidreza -- Gong, Chaohui -- Gravish, Nick -- Astley, Henry -- Travers, Matthew -- Hatton, Ross L -- Mendelson, Joseph R 3rd -- Choset, Howie -- Hu, David L -- Goldman, Daniel I -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2014 Oct 10;346(6206):224-9. doi: 10.1126/science.1255718.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. ; Robotics Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA. ; School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. ; School of Mechanical, Industrial, and Manufacturing Engineering, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR, USA. ; School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. Department of Herpetology, Zoo Atlanta, Atlanta, GA, USA. ; School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. School of Biology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. ; School of Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA. daniel.goldman@physics.gatech.edu.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25301625" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Animals
;
Body Size
;
Crotalus/*anatomy & histology/*physiology
;
*Locomotion
;
Robotics/*instrumentation
;
*Silicon Dioxide
;
Surface Properties
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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