2P1-D21 Development of a Spherical Mobile Robot with an Elastic Outer Body for Shock Absorption

摘要

In this study a spherical mobile robot with an elastic outer body for shock absorption is introduced. Many researchers have been studied about a spherical mobile robot. However the robot with an elastic outer body have not been introduced in the literature. Therefore the paper focuses on designing the spherical robot to have a good characteristic against shock, i.e., external force, unexpected contact, dropping, etc. All control modules are embedded into the spherical mobile robot with a Zigbee wireless communication module and battery, etc. Two tilt sensors and one accelerometer is embedded on the controller for measuring the posture and dynamic state of the robot. And for the main controller an embedded system is adopted in oder to drive the robot to the desired path. This study also introduces a simple steering kinematics model of the spherical robot and performs a simple steering experiment. With the experiment result we verificate the steering kinematics model.