Development of a spherical rolling robot equipped with a gyro

This paper presents a prototype of a spherical rolling robot with a new driving mechanism and shows some experimental results to verify the feasibility of the mechanism. The spherical robot has a momentum wheel (gyro) that rotates at a large velocity inside an outer spherical shell. The attitude of an inner mechanism with the gyro is stabilized through the gyroscopic effect, and the outer shell is driven by DC motors installed in the inner mechanism. The translational motion of the robot is interpreted to be caused by the transmission of angular momentum from the gyro to the outer shell. Experimental results show that a feedback controller makes the robot move at a desired translational velocity.