Efficient bending and lifting patterns in snake locomotion

Abstract

We optimize three-dimensional snake kinematics for locomotor efficiency. We assume a general space-curve representation of the snake backbone with small-to-moderate lifting off the ground and negligible body inertia. The cost of locomotion includes work against friction and internal viscous dissipation. When restricted to planar kinematics, our population-based optimization method finds the same types of optima as a previous Newton-based method. With lifting, a few types of optimal motions prevail. We have an s-shaped body with alternating lifting of the middle and ends at small-to-moderate transverse friction. With large transverse friction, curling and sliding motions are typical at small viscous dissipation, replaced by large-amplitude bending at large viscous dissipation. With small viscous dissipation, we find local optima that resemble sidewinding motions across friction coefficient space. They are always suboptimal to alternating lifting motions, with average input power 10–100% higher.