Modular robot snake at Carnegie Mellon University

The Carnegie Mellon University Bionics Laboratory develops an interesting serpentine robot that can not only crawl on the ground and mud, float, but also climb up trees and poles, along steps, inside hollow tubes and narrow cracks, grasp objects in the cast. The main line of research is the development of new modes of movement, or "gaits," if you can call it the style of movement of a snake. There is little textual information about the device and the development process of the robot on the project site, but there are a lot of videos. Here are some of them:

Using accelerometers, the robot determines the moment of impact on the obstacle and is compressed around it:


... climbs up a man's leg:


… swims:

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... climbs up inside the hollow tube:


... climbing trees: