Pivot Walking of an Inertially Actuated Robot

摘要

In this paper, we introduce an inertially actuated robot that moves in the horizontal plane. The robot is actuated by using two spinning masses. The mathematical model of the system is developed and the equations of motion are derived. The role of surface friction in the robot's motion is also investigated. We presented a theorem that proves the accessibility of affine-control nonlinear systems and applied it to our robot. Thereby, we showed that the system is not controllable without surface friction. In addition, we designed a variable structure controller to regulate specific gait pattern that we define as “pivot walking.” In addition, a trajectory generation algorithms is presented for mapping a given desired path to set of kinematic characteristic. Then, we numerically demonstrate that this approach leads to successful locomotion of the robot. Finally, we built a prototype to experimentally verify the theoretical concepts.