Design and Performance Evaluation of a Spherical Robot Assisted by High-Speed Rotating Flywheels for Self-Stabilization and Obstacle Surmounting

Abstract

In order to reinforce the operation stability and obstacle capability of a spherical robot, this paper presents a spherical robot with high-speed rotating flywheel, the mechanical structure of which is mainly composed of a spherical shell, a double pendulum on both sides and two high-speed flywheels. The robot has three excitation modes: level running, self-stability operating and obstacle surmounting. The dynamic characteristics of the pendulum, flywheel and brake of the robot are discussed through the establishment of kinematic and dynamic model of the spherical robot and the influence of parameters like weight, flywheel speed and flywheel position on its dynamic characteristics and robot performance is optimized and analyzed in detail. The research results indicate that the two flywheels located in the center of the sphere apart can bring the maximum stability gain to the sphere. Finally, the simulation and experiment of the stability gain brought by the high-speed flywheel to the sphere verify that the operation stability of the sphere is effectively improved after using the flywheel, and the robot that stops the flywheel through a brake fixed on the pendulum has better obstacle surmounting performance.

Spherical Robots: An Up-to-Date Overview of Designs and Features

“…The rolling motion of the spherical robot is implemented by means of two eccentric flywheels, and the rotation about the vertical is achieved by rotating the platform with mechanisms about the shell. In [159], a description is given of the design of a spherical robot with an internal pendulum mechanism containing three one-degree-of-freedom pendulums fastened on the same axis (see Fig. 51).…”

Velocity Control of a Multi-Motion Mode Spherical Probe Robot Based on Reinforcement Learning

“…Consequently, they have attracted many researchers and have been widely used in the detection of unknown environments [2], environmental monitoring [3,4], surveillance [5], and other fields [6]. Based on the single-motion mode [7][8][9], researchers have gradually developed spherical robots with multi-motion modes, such as rolling and jumping, rolling and crawling, and others [10][11][12][13]. The multi-motion mode further expands the application of spherical robots in environmental detection tasks.…”