Evan's Bio-Inspired Robot Design (Fall 2006) Course Project

I will be implementing a lego robot that mimics the unusual form of locomotion exhibited by the sidewinder (Crotalus cerastes) rattlesnake.

Original idea

One of the interesting aspects of the sidewinder's movement is that the number of bodyparts touching the hot sand is minimized. At first I wanted to mimic this by having a long cylindrical robot propelled by a series of rods protruding orthogonally to each other. Here is a detailed schematic:

Unfortunately, this approach proved cumbersome to implement using legos.