  Object manipulation has been extensively studied in the context of fixed base
and mobile manipulators. However, the overactuated locomotion modality employed
by snake robots allows for a unique blend of object manipulation through
locomotion, referred to as loco-manipulation. The following work presents an
optimization approach to solving the loco-manipulation problem based on
non-impulsive implicit contact path planning for our snake robot COBRA. We
present the mathematical framework and show high-fidelity simulation results
and experiments to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.
