Research On An Omnidirectional Spherical Robot

The spherical robot is a kind of novel and flexible mobile robot.In the fields of instruments and meters,military and industrial production,the spherical robot has a broad application prospect.For a spherical robot,the drive unit determines its performance.Research institutions of the world have developed a variaty of spherical robots in recent years which could be divided into the wheel type,the radial weight type,the simple pendulum type and the double pendulums type.The prior researches have obtained certain achievements.However,in terms of kinematic dexterity and model complexity,the spherical robot has some defects to be improved which seriously restricts its development and application.A kind of omnidirectional spherical robot is presented in this thesis whose structure and dynamic model are simplified.It could be used to carry instruments to roll in the pipeline to complete corresponding detection task.The main works in this thesis are as follows:1.To simplify the dynamic model of the spherical robot,a novel spherical robot was provided which was driven by two pendulums and could adjust its direction of motion through a set of screw-nut.2.The dynamic model of the motions of scrolling,climbing,steering and bouncing were developed respectively based on the Newton Euler equation and the Lagrange equation.3.The analysis of the hydromechanical characteristics of the robot was applied via the software of ANSYS and the results were fitted by the method of the least squares in the software of MATLAB to acquire the dynamic model of the spherical robot in the water supply pipeline.4.To verify the accuracy of the model,the motion simulation was conducted in the software of ADAMS.A set of experimental prototype was designed and manufactured to conduct relevant experiments to test its performance.The academic analysis and the results of simulation demonstrate that the mechanical structure is reasonable,the dynamic analysis are feasible and accurate,the performance of the robot is excellent and the the dynamic model of the spherical robot is effectively simplified compared with dynamic model of the double pendulums driving robot.