The Joysnake - A Haptic Operator Console for High-Degree-of-Freedom Robots

The University of Michigan's Mobile Robotics Lab has developed a series of so-called "serpentine robots. " These robots are slender multi-segmented vehicles that offer unprecedented mobility on rugged terrain, such as the rubble of a collapsed building. Our most advanced serpentine robot is the OmniTread-4 (OT-4) which has seven segments and 13 actuated degrees-of-freedom (DOF). A problem with high-degree-of-freedom (HDOF) serpentine robots is that they often require more than one human operator. In the case of the OT-4, three operators simultaneously control the robot using six individual joysticks as well as auxiliary instrumentation (see Figure 1.)