Motion control of spherical robot based on conservation of angular momentum

Spherical robot is a special type of mobile robot which spherical structure offers special characteristic of motion, for example it has the capability to recover from collisions with static or mobile obstacles in the same area. In this paper the motion control of a kind of spherical robot based on conservation of angular momentum is discussed. Firstly, the dynamic model of a simplified version of this kind of spherical robot is built and analyzed with Lagrange equation, and its differential motion equation is obtained and the relation equation between the motion of the spherical robot and the motion of the rotor is deduced. Then, how to control the motion of internal rotor to realize expected motion of this kind of spherical robot is presented. Finally, with the parameters of a prototype of a spherical robot the motion control approach is verified by simulations with Matlab and ADAMS respectively.