Abstract
This paper derives and experimentally investigates fundamental properties of the velocity of a snake robot conducting lateral undulation. In particular, the derived properties state that the average forward velocity of the snake robot 1) is proportional to the squared amplitude of the sinusoidal motion of each joint of the robot, 2) is proportional to the angular frequency of the sinusoidal motion of each joint, 3) is proportional to a particular function of the constant phase shift between the joints, and 4) is maximized by the phase shift between the joints that also maximizes the particular phase shift function. The paper presents an experimental investigation of the validity of these derived properties by measuring the forward velocity of a physical snake robot during lateral undulation. The experimental results support the theoretical findings.