This paper describes a prototype and analytical studies of a spherical rolling robot, a new design of an omnidirectional robot system. The robot can arbitrarily begin to move in any direction to the target, and autonomously roll and reach any desired position. Our design has considered a spherical robot with an internal mechanism for propulsion. The propulsion mechanism will distribute weights radially along spokes fixed inside the sphere and enables the robot to accelerate, decelerate, and move with constant velocity. A mathematical model of the robot’s dynamic and motion was instructed. An algorithmic motion planning is developed and, partly, pseudocode of that is presented. For a number of missions, it is shown experimentally that the model agrees well with the results.

Issue Section:
Technical Briefs
Keywords:
path planning, mobile robots, robot dynamics
Topics:
Robots, Path planning
1.
Masayoshi, W., and Shunji, M., 1996, “Modeling and Control of a New Type of Omnidirectional Holonomic Vehicle,” in AMC′96, pp. 265–270.
2.
Ferriere, L., Raucent, B., and Campion, G., 1996, “Design of Omnimobile Robot Wheels,” in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 3664–3670.
3.
Tang, J., Watanabe, K., and Shiraishi, Y., 1996, “Design and Traveling Experiment of an Omnidirectional Holonomic Mobile Robot,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Intelligent Robots and Sys., pp. 66–73.
4.
Agrachev, A. A., 1999, “An Intrinsic Approach to the Control of Rolling Bodies,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 431–435.
5.
Halme, S., Schonberg, T., and Wang, Y., 1996, “Motion Control of a Spherical Mobile Robot,” in Proceedings of AMC′96, pp. 259–264.
6.
Bicchi, A., Balluchi, A., Prattichizzo, D., and Gorelli, A., 1997, “Introducing the Sphericle: An Experimental Testbed for Research and Teaching in Nonholonomy,” in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Robotics and Automation.
7.
Bhattacharya, S., and Agrawal, S. K., 2000, “Spherical Rolling Robot: A Design and Motion Planning Studies,” in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation.
8.
Mukherjee, R., Minor, M. A., and Pukrushpan, J. T., 1999, “Simple Motion Planning Strategies for Spherobot: A Spherical Mobile Robot,” in Proceedings IEEE International Conference on Decision and Control, pp. 2132–2137.
9.
Ferriere, L., and Raucent, B., 1998, “RollMOBS, A New Universal Wheel Concept,” in Proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation, pp. 1877–1882.
10.
Roberson, R., and Schwertassek, R., 1988, Dynamics of Multibody Systems, Springer, New York.
Copyright © 2004
 by ASME
You do not currently have access to this content.