Snakes combine vertical and lateral bending to traverse uneven terrain

Terrestrial locomotion requires generating appropriate ground reaction forces which depend on substrate geometry and physical properties. The richness of positions and orientations of terrain features in the 3D world gives limbless animals like snakes that can bend their body versatility to generate forces from different contact areas for propulsion. Despite many previous studies of how snakes use lateral body bending for propulsion on relatively flat surfaces with lateral contact points, little is known about whether and how much snakes use vertical body bending in combination with lateral bending in 3D terrain. This lack had contributed to snake robots being inferior to animals in stability, efficiency, and versatility when traversing complex 3D environments. Here, to begin to elucidate this, we studied how the generalist corn snake traversed an uneven arena of blocks of random height variation five times its body height. The animal traversed the uneven terrain with perfect stability by propagating 3D bending down its body with little transverse motion (11° slip angle). Although the animal preferred moving through valleys with higher neighboring blocks, it did not prefer lateral bending. Among body-terrain contact regions that potentially provide propulsion, 52% were formed by vertical body bending and 48% by lateral bending. The combination of vertical and lateral bending may dramatically expand the sources of propulsive forces available to limbless locomotors by utilizing various asperities available in 3D terrain. Direct measurements of contact forces are necessary to further understand how snakes coordinate 3D bending along the entire body via sensory feedback to propel through 3D terrain. These studies will open a path to new propulsive mechanisms for snake robots, potentially increasing the performance and versatility in 3D terrain.