Snake Robot for Traversing Granular Media

  • Project Year: 2025-26
  • Departments Represented: MEng
  • Industry/Track: Robotics, Aerospace, or Automotive Advancements

State-of-the-art snake inspired robots are built for locomotion on dry, hard ground, with limited applications for traveling on granular media such as sand and soil. The UC Berkeley Embodied Dexterity Group needs a working model for researching undulating motion in sand. Our team built a multi-linkage limbless robot with a swappable head piece. The robot moves sinusoidally, with a waterproof “skin” that mimics the frictional properties of a snake’s ventral scales to propel it forwards in granular media.

  • Advisor(s): Hannah Stuart
  • Team: Chantal Wang [ME] Jackie Li [ME] Bryn Schoen [ME] Prateek Rout [ME]