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.