Introducing the PodRacle, spherical mode rolling locomotion on flat surface

Abstract

The ability of a robot to be able to change the shape is not something impossible to do. This research introduce such changeable shape robot named PodRacle, which has two basic forms; a form of a six-legged robot and a form of spherical robot. Combining the two basic forms, the PodRacle robot can result in increasing efficiency of a six-legged robot motion on a flat surface by means of rolling movement. The spherical robot shape can roll on a flat surface, then has a rolling speed that is faster than the walking legged robot. In order to implement the rolling movement, a prototype of robot mechanism is designed and its kinematics and dynamics equations are derived. The effectiveness of the robot and the equations are tested through experiments.