Design of an energy-based controller for a 2D ball segway

Abstract

A ball segway is a ballbot-type robot that has a car-like structure. It can move with three omnidirectional-wheel mechanisms to drive the ball while maintaining balance. To obtain stable balancing and transferring simultaneously of the 2D ball segway which is an underactuated system, a control law is designed based on energy method. The energy storage function is formulated to prove the passivity property of the system. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our approach.