A reconfigurable spherical robot

This paper presents a reconfigurable spherical robot. The reconfigurable spherical robot can be reconfigured into a form of two interconnected hemispheres with three legs equipped with three omni-directional wheels. A stable reconfiguration control algorithm is constructed to change the robot from spherical shape to two halves of interconnected hemispheres and three legged-wheeled expansions. This work also constructs a transformation controller for the robot which uses an accelerometer to sense its orientation. The performance analysis shows that our reconfigurable robot prototype can transform from spherical shape (dormant mode) into two inter connected hemispheres where the three leg-wheels are projected out of the shells (transformed mode) and vice versa. After the transformation into the three leg-wheel configuration, the robot can autonomously move in L-shaped and U-shaped areas as well as narrowing pathways.