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Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute

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Abstract

Unlike statically stable wheeled mobile robots,dynamically stable mobile robots can have higher centers of gravity, smaller bases of support and can be tall and thin resembling the shape of an adult human. This paper concerns the ballbot mobile robot, which balances dynamically on a single spherical wheel. The ballbot is omni-directional and can also rotate about its vertical axis (yaw motion). It uses a triad of legs to remain statically stable when powered off. This paper presents the evolved design with a four-motor inverse mouseball drive, yaw drive, leg drive, control system, and results including dynamic balancing, station keeping, yaw motion while balancing, and automatic transition between statically stable and dynamically stable states.

Keywords

Dynamically Stable Mobile Robots, Underactuated systems, Balancing Control.

Notes

Associated Lab(s) / Group(s): Microdynamic Systems Laboratory

Associated Project(s): Dynamically-Stable Mobile Robots in Human Environments

Number of pages: 6

Text Reference

Umashankar Nagarajan, Anish Mampetta, George A. Kantor, and Ralph Hollis, "State Transition, Balancing, Station Keeping and Yaw Control for a Dynamically Stable Single Spherical Wheel Mobile Robot," Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA 2009), May, 2009, pp. 998 - 1003.

BibTeX Reference

@inproceedings{Nagarajan_2009_6377,
   author = "Umashankar Nagarajan and Anish Mampetta and George A Kantor and Ralph Hollis",
   title = "State Transition, Balancing, Station Keeping and Yaw Control for a Dynamically Stable Single Spherical Wheel Mobile Robot",
   booktitle = "Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Robotics & Automation (ICRA 2009)",
   pages = "998 - 1003",
   month = "May",
   year = "2009",
}

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