Research On A Spherical Robot With Manipulator Used In Emergency Rescue

The spherical mobile robot has a spherical shell or shell like sphere which can support the robot to walk on the ground. Both of the driving mechanism and controlling modules are fixed in the totally-enclosed spherical shell. Its primary movement is rolling on the ground. For its special construction and movement method, the spherical mobile robot has many advantages special compared with other traditional robots.At present, the spherical mobile robots with perfect performance of movement have been designed and made, but they cannot complete some complicated tasks in some special situations without the operability outside. In order to resolve these issues, a new high-altitude throwing spherical mobile robot with a telescopic manipulator used in emergency rescue has been designed firstly based on current spherical mobile robots. Integrating the advantages of robots with multi-arms and multi-feet makes this robot can complete some outside operating tasks. In the meantime, a buffer gear installed on the robot can protect the shell and the inner structures of the shperical robot while it is thrown from high altitude to the working field. This kind of robot not only achieves the flexible movement, but also enlarges the application field of spherical robots because it can do some special tasks by telescopic arm in some special situations.Compared with other traditional spherical robots, the high-altitude throwing spherical robot with telescopic manipulator used in emergency rescue, named by BYQ-4, makes a breakthrough innovation of totally-enclosed spherical shell. It has some special properties, such as high coupling rate of mechanism, nonholonomic constraint and underactuated characteristic. So it's very difficult to set up the theoretical and control model. At the same time, on the high-altitude throwing request, the protecting ability of the buffer gear becomes the premise of robot to work normally.The following aspects are the main research work and achievements:(1) According to the application request of high-altitude throwing and outside operating in some special rescue environment, the physical design proposals are drawn up, and then theirs structure performance is analyzed. (2) According to the characteristics of mechanism and constraint relationship of different parts, the kinematic model of spherical mobile robot with telescopic manipulator is built. The dynamical model of BYQ-4 is also given based on Kane equation. These two models set up the theoretical foundation for control strategy and optimization design. The performance evaluation indexes of BYQ-4 are proposed based on the analysis of its mechanism characteristics and motion characteristics. The improved Genetic Algorithm is applied to optimize the design of the robot.(3) Based on the analysis of the controllability and the mechanism characteristics of BYQ-4, the motion of BYQ-4 operability outside is predigested to an associated movement composed of ball movement and capture motion. The movement characteristics and control mode of every motion are analyzed. The decoupled coordinating control method and time-state control method are used to track the positions and control the posture of BYQ-4 to complete the outside operating function.(4) The motion performance of BYQ-4 impacted by joint friction, sliding friction and rolling resistance is studied in the paper. As for the out of roundness of real spherical shell, the segmentation modeling method is applied to build the dynamical model. As for poor measurement precision and unknown characteristics of the non-ideal factors, the adaptive control method is also applied to rectify the system parameters to realize stable control of BYQ-4. In the end, the motion performance and the validity of the adaptive control method applied to the non-ideal model under the non-ideal situation are verified by comparing the results of simulations and experiments.(5) The intensity analysis of the spherical shell which acts as the carrier and a main part of robot is done. The protection mechanisms of netlike shell are designed for two situations, walking and falling from high position. Using the Newton-Euler method, the motion performance of the spherical robot with netlike shell is analyzed. At the same time, the prototype testing of network shell finishes, the experiment results are very valuable for the theoretical basis and practical experience of the analysis of improved design of spherical shell.