English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

Terrestrial locomotion requires generating appropriate ground reaction forceswhich depend on substrate geometry and physical properties. The richness ofpositions and orientations of terrain features in the 3-D world gives limblessanimals like snakes that can bend their body versatility to generate forcesfrom different contact areas for propulsion. Despite many previous studies ofhow snakes use lateral body bending for propulsion on relatively flat surfaceswith lateral contact points, little is known about whether and how much snakesuse vertical body bending in combination with lateral bending in 3-D terrain.This lack had contributed to snake robots being inferior to animals instability, efficiency, and versatility when traversing complex 3-Denvironments. Here, to begin to elucidate this, we studied how the generalistcorn snake traversed an uneven arena of blocks of random height variation 5times its body height. The animal traversed the uneven terrain with perfectstability by propagating 3-D bending down its body with little transversemotion (11{\deg} slip angle). Although the animal preferred moving throughvalleys with higher neighboring blocks, it did not prefer lateral bending.Among body-terrain contact regions that potentially provide propulsion, 52%were formed by vertical body bending and 48% by lateral bending. Thecombination of vertical and lateral bending may dramatically expand the sourcesof propulsive forces available to limbless locomotors by utilizing variousasperities available in 3-D terrain. Direct measurements of contact forces arenecessary to further understand how snakes coordinate 3-D bending along theentire body via sensory feedback to propel through 3-D terrain. These studieswill open a path to new propulsive mechanisms for snake robots, potentiallyincreasing the performance and versatility in 3-D terrain.

Snakes combine vertical and lateral bending to traverse uneven terrain