Development and control of articulated amphibious spherical robot

Abstract

In this paper, we proposed an amphibious spherical robot that can search and rescue from uneven terrain and also move in narrow underwater spaces. This paper presents three control methods for an articulated amphibious spherical robot. The first is a full-dimensional that is adapted the robot to the complex amphibious terrain, in this method, relying on a novel drive mode of mecanum wheels, the power required for the movement comes from the friction generated by mecanum wheels and the spherical shell. The second control method is modeling based on a unit quaternion motion control algorithm to realized 6 Degrees of Freedoms (DoFs) movement mode. The last control algorithm is according to Archimede Buoyancy Principle (ABP) and Fuzzy Control (FC) algorithm by controlling the air density of the spherical capsules in the lower hemispheres, the relationship between buoyancy and gravity is controlled to achieve the functions of floating and diving. Experiments are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed methods and the developed robot.