Whole-Body Path Following of an Active-Joint Active-Wheel Snake Robot Based on Head-Body Stepwise Control

This paper presents a two-dimensional planar path-following controller for active-joint active-wheel snake-like robots. Compared to passive-wheel snake robots, active-wheel snake robots can navigate narrower spaces and generate stronger driving forces, enabling adaptation to various terrains. However, due to the highly redundant multi-link and multi-active-wheel body configuration, achieving whole-body path following for active-joint active-wheel snake robots is challenging. To address this, we