• Login
    View Item 
    •   SMARTech Home
    • Georgia Tech Theses and Dissertations
    • Georgia Tech Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    •   SMARTech Home
    • Georgia Tech Theses and Dissertations
    • Georgia Tech Theses and Dissertations
    • View Item
    JavaScript is disabled for your browser. Some features of this site may not work without it.

    Limbless locomotion in complex terrestrial terrain

    Thumbnail
    View/Open
    SCHIEBEL-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf (13.11Mb)
    Date
    2019-01-15
    Author
    Schiebel, Perrin Elizabeth
    Metadata
    Show full item record
    Abstract
    Limbless locomotion is used by animals ranging from micro to macroscopic to move in a wide variety of terrains. Snakes in particular use their elongate bodies to swim in water, climb trees, burrow into sand and soil, crawl across terrestrial terrain from jungle to desert, and glide through the air. The versatility of limbless locomotion makes it suitable for situations that challenge legged or wheeled platforms, and for this reason snake-like robots are an attractive solution for engineering problems like movement in the confined, unstable rubble of a collapsed building. We studied the motion of live snakes as they moved through laboratory models of terrestrial terrain to search for principles governing both the relationship between waveform and performance as mediated by the terrain physics and the neuromechanical strategies for coordinating a many degrees-of-freedom body in complex surroundings. We found the desert-dwelling snake, Chionactis occipitalis, in homogeneous granular matter used a stereotyped waveform to move quickly across the surface. Resistive force theory calculation of sand-swimming performance revealed the self-deformation pattern of the snakes conferred maximum speed given a constraint on peak power. We explored the neuromechanics of these snakes by observing kinematics as they traversed a single row of posts. The interaction resulted in a mechanical diffraction pattern, reminiscent of the diffraction of subatomic particles. Comparison with a geometric model revealed this phenomenon was explained by an unaltered motor program supplemented by passive dynamics. We modeled multi-component terrestrial terrain as arrays of rigid posts of different post-to-post spacing affixed to a low-friction substrate and embedded in granular matter. The performance of the desert snake was a function of both substrate and lattice spacing, and comparison to a generalist snake species (Pantherophis guttatus) suggested that the ability to modulate the waveform in response to the environment was important in variable terrain.
    URI
    http://hdl.handle.net/1853/62635
    Collections
    • Georgia Tech Theses and Dissertations [23877]
    • School of Physics Theses and Dissertations [621]

    Browse

    All of SMARTechCommunities & CollectionsDatesAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypesThis CollectionDatesAuthorsTitlesSubjectsTypes

    My SMARTech

    Login

    Statistics

    View Usage StatisticsView Google Analytics Statistics
    facebook instagram twitter youtube
    • My Account
    • Contact us
    • Directory
    • Campus Map
    • Support/Give
    • Library Accessibility
      • About SMARTech
      • SMARTech Terms of Use
    Georgia Tech Library266 4th Street NW, Atlanta, GA 30332
    404.894.4500
    • Emergency Information
    • Legal and Privacy Information
    • Human Trafficking Notice
    • Accessibility
    • Accountability
    • Accreditation
    • Employment
    © 2020 Georgia Institute of Technology