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Snakes can traverse almost all types of environments by bending theirelongate bodies in 3-D to interact with the terrain. Similarly, a snake robotis a promising platform to perform critical tasks in various environments.Understanding how 3-D body bending effectively interacts with the terrain forpropulsion and stability can not only inform how snakes traverse naturalenvironments, but also allow snake robots to achieve similar performance.  How snakes and snake robots move on flat surfaces has been understood well.However, such ideal terrain is rare in natural environments and little wasunderstood about how to generate propulsion and maintain stability in 3-Dterrain, except for some studies on arboreal snake locomotion and on robotsusing geometric planning. To bridge the knowledge gap, we integrated animalexperiments and robotic studies in three representative environments: a largesmooth step, an uneven arena of blocks of large height variation, and largebumps.  We discovered that vertical body bending induces stability challenges but cangenerate large propulsion. When traversing a large smooth step, a snake robotis challenged by roll instability that increases with the amplitude of verticalbending. The instability can be reduced by body compliance that statisticallyimproves body-terrain contact. Despite this, vertical body bending canpotentially allow snakes to push against terrain for propulsion, asdemonstrated by corn snakes traversing an uneven arena. A snake robot cangenerate large propulsion like this if contact is well maintained. Contactfeedback control can help accommodate perturbations such as novel terraingeometry or excessive external forces by improving contact. Our findingsprovide insights into how snakes and snake robots can use vertical body bendingfor efficient and versatile traversal of the 3-D world stably.

Snake and Snake Robot Locomotion in Complex, 3-D Terrain