Design, Modeling and Experiment of an Eccentric Mass-driven Spherical Robot

Abstract

The spherical robot's hermetically sealed spherical housing renders it flexible and capable of functioning continuously in harsh weather conditions and challenging environments. In order to address the issue of insufficient climbing ability of spherical robots, a single eccentric mass-driven spherical robot was designed. The climbing process of a spherical robot was subjected to analysis, with particular attention paid to the mass distribution of the robot's spherical shell and internal structure. A kinematics model and a dynamics model were developed to decompose the robot's motion into linear and steering motions. The mass size and swing amplitude of the eccentric mass are the key factors affecting the motion performance and stability of the spherical robot, and the swinging process of the heavy pendulum with different eccentric masses is analyzed. The experimental results indicate that the robot has a minimum turning radius of 0.5 m and is capable of climbing slopes with a gradient of 12°. The maximum error in the speed control of the spherical robot is 0.3314 rad/s.