Biorobotics Lab, Carnegie Mellon University (USA) CMU Modular Snake Robots (Unified / SEA Snake) (1)

Biorobotics Lab, Carnegie Mellon University (USA) CMU Modular Snake Robots (Unified / SEA Snake) (2)

Not soldLab research platforms; never offered for sale.

Not for sale (research)Not programmableModularSearch & rescuePipe climbingResearch

Not soldShipping: Not sold. Research platforms that were never sold; the lab occasionally deploys them with partners for inspection and rescue trials.

Remote control: Not possible. Lab-only platforms operated through the lab's own tethered control station.

Biorobotics Lab robots ↗SEA Snake ↗Mexico City deployment (CMU) ↗

Overview

The best-known family of research snake robots, from Howie Choset's Biorobotics Lab. The modules can climb poles, crawl through the insides and outsides of pipe networks, and roll over rubble; the series-elastic SEA Snake adds compliant control for unstructured terrain. In September 2017 a 16-module, 2-inch snake with a head camera was taken to a collapsed apartment building in Mexico City with the Mexican Red Cross; it made two passes through the rubble but found no survivors. The lab's modular actuator work later fed into HEBI Robotics, a spin-off founded by Choset and former lab members.

Specifications

Category	Crawlers, snakes & climbers · Snake robots
Released	2008
Availability	Not for sale (research)
Programmability	No programmability
Best for	Professionals & labs
Vision sensors	Camera
Actuators	Unknown
Audio	No audio
Compute type	Laptop / PC as the brain
Remote control	Not programmable
Size	~94 cm long, 5 cm (2 in) diameter for the 16-module snake deployed in Mexico City
Locomotion	Chain of identical joint modules (lateral undulation, sidewinding, rolling, pole and pipe climbing)
Compute	Per-module electronics; off-board operator control (details not published)
Camera	Video camera with LED lights in the head module
Sensors	Not published per module (SEA Snake adds series-elastic torque sensing)
Runtime	Tethered power and control
Speed	Not published
SDK	None public (lab software)