An Efficient Follow-the-Leader Strategy for Continuum Robot Navigation and Coiling

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Efficient path planning for hyper-redundant continuum and snake-like robots is a challenging task due to limited sensing capabilities, high computational loads, multiple possible solutions, and non-linear models. This letter presents a new approach to snake robot navigation and coiling, with an algorithm that enables online step-by-step position adjustment with a follow-the-leader strategy, significantly improving the performance of the robot when compared to previous methods. The proposed algorithm is demonstrated on a 16-degree-of-freedom snake-like robot for inspection and maintenance tasks in nuclear facilities.