An omni-directional rolling spherical robot with telescopic manipulator

In this paper, an omni-directional rolling spherical robot with telescopic manipulator (BYQ-IV) is presented. This robot is designed for territory or lunar exploration. It not only has features like straight line motion, circular motion, zero turning radius and obstacle avoidance, but also is able to accomplish tasks such as stably grabbing and delivering assemblies. The structure of the whole robot is divided into three sub-systems, including the motion driving system; the manipulator system and the stability maintain system. Moreover, the distribute control system of the robot based on ARM processor and wireless communication system are introduced and the software architecture of control system is analyzed. The experiment shows that the prototype of the spherical robot with telescopic manipulator (BYQ-IV) can stably grasp a static target and carry it to a new location.