Novel Spherical Robot with Hybrid Pendulum Driving Mechanism

As regards omnidirectional driving, conventional one- and two-pendulum spherical robots have a limited capability due to a limited pendulum motion range. In particular, such robots cannot move from a stationary state in a parallel direction to the center horizontal axis to which the pendulums are attached. Thus, to overcome the limited driving capability of one- and two-pendulum driven spherical robots, a passive version of a spherical robot, called KisBot II, was developed with a curved two-pendulum driving mechanism operated by a joystick. However, this paper presents an active upgraded version of KisBot II that includes a DSP-based control system and Task-based software architecture for driving control and data communication, respectively. A dynamic model for two-pendulum driving is derived using the Lagrange equation method, and a feedback controller for linear driving using two pendulums is then constructed based on the dynamic model. Experiments with several motions verify the driving efficiency of the proposed novel spherical robot.

Abstract licence: CC BY

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