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)