Spherical Mobile Robot Driven by Single Omni Wheel

Abstract

This paper presents a new spherical mobile robot driven by single omni wheel. The physical model is that an arc track is built inside the sphere shell and can rotate around a spherical diameter freely. It supports one driving omni wheel and keeps the driving omni wheel touching the inside of the sphere shell. The touching friction force can drive the sphere rolling forward or backward. Steering drive can move the omni wheel running along the arc track, that leads the spherical mobile robot turning left or right. The omni wheel can run sphere shell in straight way and turn its direction freely at same time. The mechanism of the spherical mobile robot is described in detail, and its motion and dynamics coordinate systems are built to analysis. The preliminary analysis shows that the robot has a variety of good motion capabilities, such as obstacle crossing, jumping, small radius steering etc.