Design And Implementation Of A Novel Spherical Robot

Spherical robot is a new kind of robot that has a global shell and moves mostly by rolling. This kind of robot rolls by inside drive unit. It has some special advantages as follows, strong attitude recovery ability and maneuverability, low energy consumption. Consequently, spherical robot have a bright future in fields of military affairs, industry and civil application. It is subjected to more and more concern by expert and scholar in both domestic and overseas.In the mass, those existing spherical robots had their own advantages and disadvantages, which include complicated structure, difficult realization and low practicability. Especially, several drive unit's principle was too complex, that increased the movement control difficulty. They could not carry accessory and offer stable platform to hold various instrument and device, which decreased the practicability of spherical robot. Those above problems restricted the generalization and application.In this paper we proposed a novel spherical robot with simplified structure which has been applied for patent (ZL200810020280.7). This omnidirectional spherical robot has a simplified structure and high practicability, and is provided with environmental and attitude perception ability. It also can carry accessory and offer stable platform, which overcomes those above disadvantages.Spherical robot is a typical non-holonomic system. Based on the non-holonomic constraint acting on the spherical robot when it rolls without a slipping on a flat surface, its kinematic model was established. Its dynamic model was derived by applying the Lagrange-Routh equations. Using the Simulink tools in Matlab, the dynamic model had been simulated. Simultaneously, the whole mechanical structure was designed and processed. This paper participated in hardware design of the control system, including robot control system based on TMS320F2812 and wireless control system based on CC2430, programmed for every module, designed foreground and background control program for control system.Embed real-time operating systemμC/OS-II was ported in TMS320F2812, and the application tasks were designed and attempered by operating system kernel. Thus, robot system has better real-time performance and software has higher quality which makes maintenance and expansion easier. Serial communication protocol was constituted and measurement contol software of host computer based on serical communication was contrived by C++ Builder, which can control the spherical robot with simplified structure from host computer.Finally, whole robot was assembled and experiments were taken. Experiment result indicated that the spherical robot with simplified structure can move in all directions with environmental and attitude perception ability. It also has some other advantages, such as low energy consumption, simple drive structure, offering stable platform and executing device.