Experimental study of a capsubot for two dimensional movements

Abstract

A capsubot (capsule robot) which works on the principle of internal reaction force has no external moving parts whereas a conventional robot has legs and/or wheels. It is an underactuated mechanical system and has a lot of potential applications such as medical diagnosis, underground pipe leakage detection, rescue work in the hazardous environment etc. However, most capsule robots studied/developed can only move in one dimension (1D). This paper presents the implementation of the recently proposed double parallel mass capsubot which uses two parallel inner masses (IMs) to move the capsubot in two dimensions (2D). A three stage control strategy is proposed to resolve the control issue of underactuated mechanical system. A closed-loop control approach is applied to the IMs of the capsubot. The comparison with the simulation studies are also obtained and analyzed.