Proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Biomimetics August 22 - 26, 2004, Shenyang, China

A Snake Robot Using Shape Memory Alloys

C. Y. Liu
Dept. of Automation and Computer-Aided Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China cyliu@acae.cuhk.edu.hk

W. H. Liao
Dept. of Automation and Computer-Aided Engineering The Chinese University of Hong Kong Shatin, N.T., Hong Kong, China whliao@cuhk.edu.hk The most commonly used one is Nitinol. It is a Nickel/Titanium alloy developed by the Naval Ordnance Laboratory in US. The shape memory effect occurs due to a temperature and stress dependent shift in the crystalline structure between two different phases called martensite and austenite. The material in the lower temperature martensite phase, is relatively soft, while in the higher temperature austenite phase, it is relatively hard. The alloy deforms easily when it is in the martensite and the twinned structure allows the crystals boundary shift but do not suffer permanent change. When heating the SMA to above its transition temperature, the crystals will change to austenite phase and return to its original shape with a large force. When cooling the SMA again below its transition temperature, the crystals will change to martensite phase and the SMA can be easily deformed again. It can be heated and cooled many times and still retain this property. SMA actuators can produce large strains and forces; they are suitable to be used in robot actuation. SMA has the advantages that it requires a simple actuation mechanism, and can be used as Direct Drive Linear Actuator without using any gear reduction or amplification. Also, it has silent actuation, and requires low driving voltages (10 to 20 V) [7]. II. DESIGN OF THE SNAKE ROBOT

AbstractShape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are materials that have the ability to return to their predetermined shapes when heated. Using electrically heated SMAs, actuators can be designed for motion and force control. In this paper, the development and testing of a snake robot that uses SMAs as actuators is presented. An eight-segment robot is designed to move similar to the rectilinear motion of a natural snake. A pair of SMA wires are implemented into each segment. One of the SMA wires in each segment is heated at a time, and it acts like a muscle to change the shape of the segment. A sequence of activation for the SMA wires is designed for the robot to move forward and backward. A prototype robot is built, and it can move well with the desired locomotion. Keywords- snake robot; shape memory alloy

I.

INTRODUCTION

Most of the conventional robots move by wheels or legs. However, without wheels or legs, serpentine robots can locomote with body motion, which move similar to the biological snakes. Most serpentine robots are developed to reach the place where traditional machines fail to reach. They can traverse rough terrain, climb steps which heights approach their longest linear dimension, pass soft or viscous materials, span gasps, etc. Because of their small frontal area, they can penetrate location with smaller cross-sectional areas than man-equivalent legged or wheeled vehicles. Several applications, including industrial inspection and exploration of hazardous environments, compel serpentine robots. A lot of different serpentine robots have been implemented by now. NASA has developed a snakebot for Mars exploration [1]. Sensor Based Planning Lab in Carnegie Mellon University has developed Modular Serpentine Robots [2] to do different tasks. Other examples include ACM snake [3], GMD-snake [4], NEC-'Quake'Snake [5], and JPL-Snake [6], etc. However most of the snake robots that available now are using servomotors to provide the actuation motions. Less work has been done using Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) as actuators for snake robots. In this paper, an eight-segment snake robot is designed using SMA actuators. SMAs consist of a group of metallic materials that are capable of memorizing their original configurations after heated above their characteristic transition temperatures.

A. Body Structure The robot designed consists of eight segments, and each segment has a revolution joint and the rotational axis is horizontal and perpendicular to the axis along the robot body. The structure of the robot is shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1. Structure of the eight-segment robot

0-7803-8641-8/04/$20.00 2004 IEEE

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M SMA M SMA

M ext 3 M ext 2

1 M SMA 3

(1) (2)

where MSMA is the torque produced by the SMA wire when it is activated, and Mext is the external torque needed for the movement of the robot. This means that the SMA has to generate a torque 1.5 times higher than the required external torque.
Figure 2. Prototype of a segment of the robot

Those nine parts of the robot are made of plastic of 3 mm thickness. They are produced by the rapid prototyping machine (StrataSys FDM1600). Screws and nuts are used to connect the parts together at the pivot point of each segment (Fig. 2). B. SMA Actuators The SMA wires that use in this design have a diameter of 0.8 mm, and the transformation temperature is at about 60 C. The SMA wires are activated electrically. When the electrical current flows through the SMA wire, it is heated by Joule resistive heating, and returns to its predetermined shape as shown in Fig. 3. Two SMA wires are connected into each segment of the robot by screws and nuts as shown in Fig. 4(a). They are placed in pure antagonistic operations, and only one of the wires is heated at a time. When one wire is activated, it returns to its predetermined shape and provides a bias force for deforming its antagonistic wire and an external torque for driving the robot. Assume that the force required to deform a SMA wire is 1/3 of the force it generates, then we can get the following equation:

It is shown in Fig. 4(b) that when the lower wire activated, the distance between its two ends is extended to 4 cm, and the distance between its two ends of the upper wire is shorten to 2 cm. By geometric calculation, it can be found that the maximum rotation of the actuator ( ) is 39.5. C. Robot Locomotion The robot is designed to move in rectilinear locomotion [8] of the natural snakes. In rectilinear motion, muscles shift the skeleton with respect to the skin. Waves of muscular contraction along the body move the whole body forward. Traction to the ground is enabled by belly scales.

Figure 3. When the SMA wire is heated, the distance between its two ends extended from 2 cm to 4 cm.

Figure 4. (a) SMA wire is fixed to the plastic block by screw, nut and metal ring. (b) Cross-section of a segment with one of the SMA wires activated.

Figure 5. Sequence of activation of SMA wires to make the robot move

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In this robot, the movement is in a vertical alignment. Rectilinear locomotion propagates a wave along the length of the body. This reverse moving wave provides for locomotion by lifting a portion of the body and using length in the wave to move the head forward and down. It is an effective gait that does not slip or slide much along the ground. To make the robot have a rectilinear locomotion, a sequence of motions of the segments are designed to make the robot move in a sine curve. In a period of motion (T) of the robot, the upper SMA wire and the lower SMA wire are activated once in each segment. However the time of activation for each segment is different by Tk/4, where k = 1, 2 or 3. Fig. 5 shows the sequence of activation of SMA wires in order to make the robot move to the right. The bolded lines in the figures of the robot shape represent the activated SMA wires. It can be seen from Fig. 5, four SMA wires are activated each time. For each segment, time is allowed for one wire to be cooled down before its antagonistic wire is heated. We can notice that the sequence of activation for SMA wires is repeated by the time period T. Also, the motions of the first four segments are exactly the same as the motions of the last four segments of the robot. To make the robot move to left, we need to reverse the sequence of the activation of the SMA wires. Therefore, the robot can move forward and backward by changing the operation of the SMA wires. Assume that the snake robot does not slide backward, the SMA wires are in full contraction and generate a torque 1.5 times higher than the required external torque when they are activated. Consider the shaded segment in Fig. 6, when the robot is in this configuration, since the robot does not slide back, so the segment will rotate about point A, while keeping in touch with the ground. After that, since there is force given by another joint to move the robot forward, so the segment will again rotate about point B. In a period T, we can just consider the first four segments since the last four segments duplicate the motions of the first four segments. As shown in Fig. 7, each of the four segments does the motion of the shaded segment once (the grey segment in Fig. 6, so the robot will move from the narrowed-line position to the bolded-line position. Thus, the distance moved by the robot in a period:
BC BC BC AB 4*l 4 .5 cm AC AC
Figure 7. Movement of the robot in a period

where l is the maximum elongated length of the segment. It should be noted that the displacement calculated here may be over-estimated. As the segment is connected together and the robot is loaded, the rotation of each segment would be smaller than 39.5. Also, the robot may slide back due to the smoothness of the ground in the real situation. Therefore, the displacement would be much smaller than 4.5 cm. The speed of the linear motion of the robot is given by:
Speed BC T 4 .5 cm T

(4)

From (4), it shows that the linear speed of the robot is dependent on the cycling rate of the SMA wires. To increase the speed of the robot, we need to increase the cooling rate by some method, for example, implement the whole robot in water, or place the BMS springs inside some narrow water pipes. D. Interface Circuit and Control of the Robot The robot has 16 actuators, and it must be controlled by a computer. Therefore, an interface circuit is needed to receive signals from the computer and provide adjustable voltages to the SMA wires. The circuit designed includes the control system and power system for the SMA wires. The schematic diagram of the interface circuit is shown in Fig. 8. The control system is used to provide the on and off control for the operation of the SMA wires. In this design, the interface is connected to the parallel port on a PC computer by the DB-25 male connector. A program is used to send the signals to the parallel port to control the activation for the SMA wires. When the running program sends a command to the parallel port, the signals are sent to the interface card via the DB-25 connector. If the latches (74F373) outputs are enabled, the data signals will be passed to the drivers (ULN2003, U4-U6), which activate the corresponding SMA wires. The power system provides energy to heat the SMA wires, while driving other supporting electronics. In this circuit, the 7812 regulator together with the variable resistor, control the voltage from the power supply to the SMA wires. The output of the regulator is about 12V. By adjusting the variable resistor, we can increase or decrease the voltage and power to the SMA wires.

(3)

Figure 6. Motion of the shaded segment

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P1 CONNECTOR DB25

U4A
1 2 16 SMA wire 1 SMA wire 2 SMA wire 3 SMA wire 4 SMA wire 5 SMA wire 6 SMA wire 7

ULN2003 15

............

13 25 12 24 11 23 10 22 9 21 8 20 7 19 6 18 5 17 4 16 3 15 2 14 1

3 4

14 13 12 11 10

U1
3 4 7 8 13 14 17 18
1 11
D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7 OC G Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7

R1

2 5 6 9 12 15 16 19

6 7

U4G

ULN2003
1

U5A

16 SMA wire 8

10K ,1/4W

74F373
U2 3 4 7 8 13 14 17 18
1 11
D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7 OC G Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7
2 3 4 5 6 7

R2 10K ,1/4W

2 5 6 9 12 15 16 19

ULN2003 15 14 13 12 11
U5G 10 ULN2003

SMA SMA SMA SMA SMA

wire wire wire wire wire

9 10 11 12 13

U6A

74F373 U3

R3

3 4 7 8 13 14 17 18
1 11

D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7 OC G

Q0 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q5 Q6 Q7

2 5 6 9 12 15 16 19

2 3 4 5 6 7 (For future additional uses)

ULN2003 15 14 13 12 11
U6G 10

ULN2003

.......

.......

SMA wire 14

16 SMA wire 15 SMA wire 16

.......

(For f uture addition of SMA wires)

10K ,1/4W

U7 L7812CV
1
VIN VOUT 2
1

SW1
2

74F373

GND

15-20V DC In

D1 2001

R4 1k ,1/4W
R6 2k

R5 100 ,1/4W

Figure 8. Schematic of the interface circuit

III.

EXPERIMENTAL SETUP AND RESULTS

A. Testing of the Actuator Performance A segment connected with SMA wires is tested here. One SMA wire is activated by electricity each time. Fig. 9(a) shows the segment when the lower SMA wire is activated, while Fig. 9(b) shows the segment when the upper SMA wire is activated. The response time of the SMA wire is about 10 seconds, and the cooling time is 5 seconds. The maximum distance between two ends of the SMA wire is about 3.9 cm. By calculation, the angle is about 31.7. B. Testing of the Locomotion In the design part, it was mentioned that the motions of the first four segments are exactly the same as the motions of the last four segments of the robot. Therefore, a foursegment robot can be used for the testing of the locomotion of the robot. A circuit with manual switches is designed for the testing. Each time two SMA wires are activated, and the sequence of activation is the same as that given in Fig. 5. The experimental setup is shown in Fig. 10. Each pair of SMA wires are heated for 10 seconds by closing the corresponding switches, and then change to the other pair. Fig.11 shows the results of the experiment, and the movements.of the robot. From the experimental results, we can observe that the robot move forward after a cycle time (40 seconds). The forward displacement is about 1 cm, which is much smaller than the ideal displacement (4.5 cm) that calculated before. This is mainly because the SMAs are not fully activated and the robot slides back. To improve the situation, some rough material should be added to the bottom part of each segment to increase the friction force between the robot and ground.

Figure 9. Segments with activated SMA wires

Figure 10. Experimental Setup

Speed

BC T

1cm 40 s

0 .025 cm / s

(5)

The speed of the robot is quite slow. It can be improved by increasing the power to the system, so that the cycling time is shorter and the speed will be faster.

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Figure 12. An eight-segment snake robot

A major concern in this project is that the SMAs need large power to be activated. The power system of the interface circuit can not provide enough power for the robot to move appropriately, so that part of the circuit needs to be redesigned for further improvement. ACKNOWLEDGMENT The authors would like to thank Mr. Mok Wai-kit, Allan, Electronic Officer of the ACAE department, who has been providing great helps on technical matters in making the prototype. REFERENCES
[1] Figure 11. Snapshots of the robot movements [2] http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=snakebot. htm&url=http://www.space.com/news/snakebots_000504.html Pasadena Bureau Chief, NASA's 'Snakebots' Slither to Life, May 04, 2000. http://voronoi.sbp.ri.cmu.edu/projects/modsnake/modsnake.html, Modular Serpentine Robot Locomotion, Sensor Based Planning Lab, Carnegie Mellon University. Y. Umetani and S. Hirose. Biomechanical study of active cordmechanism with tactile sensors, in Proc. 6th Int. Symp. On Industrial Robots, pages c1-1-c1-10, Nottingham, 1976. R. Worst and R. Linnemann, "Construction and operation of a snake-like robot", in Proc. IEEE International Joint Symposia on Intelligence and Systems, Los Alamitos, CA, 1996. A. Wolf, H. B. Brown, R. Casciola, A. Costa, M. Schwerin, E. Shamas, H. Choset, A mobile hyper redundant mechanism for search and rescue tasks, in Proc. of the 2003 IEEE/RSJ, Intl. Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems, Las Vegas, Nevada, 2003. T. Lee, T. Ohm, and S. Hayati, "A highly redundant robot system for inspection," in Proc. of the Conference on Intelligent Robotics in the Field, Factory, Service, and Space (CIRFFSS '94), Houston, Texas, March 21-24, 1994, pp. 142-149. O. K. Rediniotis, L. N. Wilson, D. C. Lagoudas and M. M. Khan, Development of a shape-memory-alloy actuated biomimetic hydrofoil, Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, Vol. 13, pp. 35-49, January 2002. K. J. Dowling, Limbless Locomotion: Learning to Crawl with a Snake Robot, Ph.D. Thesis, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, December, 1997.

C. Control of the Robot The whole robot shown in Fig. 12 and the interface circuit are then built for testing the whole system. The control program works well to send signals to the robot. However, the robot just has a little movement and cannot move forward. The power provided by the interface circuit is not enough to drive the robot to move forward. Therefore, the power system in the interface circuit should be improved for providing larger power. IV. CONCLUSION

[3]

[4]

[5]

A snake robot, the interface circuit and the control program have been developed. This snake robot is tested and it moves with the designed locomotion. The speed of the robot is 0.025 cm/s, and the movement of the robot is quite stable. To improve the speed of the robot, we can increase the power for activating the SMAs for the robot, or choose a SMA with faster response for development. Also, we can increase the friction force between the robot and floor, by adding some rough materials on the bottom of the robot.

[6]

[7]

[8]

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