Motion planning of a mechanical snake using neural networks

Abstract

In this thesis, an optimal strategy is developed to get a mechanical snake (a robot composed of a sequence of articulated links), which is located arbitrarily in an enclosed region, out of the region through a specified exit without violating certain constraints. This task is done in two stages: Finding an optimal path that can be tracked, and tracking the optimal path found. Each stage is implemented by a neural network. Neural network of the second stage is constructed by direct evaluation of the weights after designing an efficient structure. Two independent neural networks are designed to implement the first stage, one trained to implement an algorithm we have derived to generate minimal paths and the other trained using multi-stage neural network approach. For the second design, the intuitive multi-stage neural network back propagation approach in the literature is formalized.