STRUCTURE AND DYNAMIC MODELLING OF A SPHERICAL

ROBOT

Hashem Ghariblu Hadi Mohammadi

Mechatronics Lab., Mech. Eng. dept. University Mechatronics Lab., Mech. Eng. dept. University
of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran. of Zanjan, Zanjan, Iran.
[email protected]

was actually the wheel that was rotated or the inner drive unit
itself A wheeled car that rests on the sphere shell only by its
ABSTRACT
own weight was proposed by Bicchi et al. [3-4]. this
mechanism rendered the robot rather sensitive to external
This paper deals with the construction and dynamics of a
perturbations such as dents in the floor or obstacles, and
spherical mobile robot. The robot longitudinal and lateral
concluded that a stabilizing beam could be advantageous., they
motions are obtained by replacing the mass center of the
used a combination of unicycle kinematics and ball plate
internal driving unit emU) with two sets of orthogonal
kinematics for modeling the robot. Mukhe�iee et al. [5-6] has
actuation systems. The unique mechanical structure of the
patented a propulsion system with no wheels, instead of wheels
driving unit makes it more reliable and more stable than
a system of pancake motors are mounted to non-symmetrical
previous similar robots and results more precise control of the
orthogonal axes, and move along their respective axes and
robot in different paths and places. The different components of
thereby move the mass center, they studied the feasibility of
mechanical construction, actuators drive and control system,
moving a spherical robot to an arbitrary point and orientation
and assembling these components to work as a robot are
but their work do not contain any references to experiences
explained. Based on the Lagrangian formulation mathematical
with their developed prototype. After Mukhe�iee a similar
model and motion properties of the robot are analyzed.
robot was developed by lavadi et al. [7] which using four axes
instead of three, mounted in an inside tetrahedral pattern that
1. INTRODUCTION yields simpler mathematical model. Koshiyama et al. [8]
introduced a robot with two internal pendulums for displacing
Spherical robot compared to traditional, wheeled and tracked the robot's gravity center. Running over obstacles at high­
mobile robots have a lot of advantageous such as their speed and maintaining a great stability was this robot's
mobility, high maneuverability, good dynamic stability and low advantageous however it was not able to move in all directions
rolling resistance, ability to move in any direction, navigating at all times. A robot based on the gimbal principle was built
around objects and preventing the robot from getting stuck in and analyzed by Heggelund et al [9]. Ferriere et al. [10]
corners or overturning. Other advantages of spherical robots designed and developed 'Rollmob', which is a spherical ball
are their ideal capability and superior strength for throwing, driven by a universal wheel equipped with rollers. The rotation
dropping or functioning in hazardous and harsh environments, of the roller wheel drives the sphere around the direction
in snow, mud and even water, because of their outer sealed parallel to the wheel axis, while the sphere rotates freely
surface and protected inner sensory equipment, electronics, and around the direction perpendicular to this axis. Chemel et al.
driving mechanisms. These properties cause many researchers [11] proposed Cyclops, a robot with two degrees of freedom
attract to design and prototype of different form of spherical locomotion system. It could pivot in place along its vertical
robots. These robots can be used in military detection, axis and roll forward and backward along a fixed horizontal
harvesting natural resources or construction, entertainment, axis with a small motor and gear-head fixed inside. The review
surveillance tasks or taking care of routine tasks in society like papers discussing constructional details of available spherical
monitoring safety or guarding houses, carrying different types mobile robots are [12, 13] and a concise review on the existing
of loads, e.g. cameras, sensor equipment and etc., navigation in path planning algorithms and feedback algorithms for the
unknown or varying territories, such as lunar explorations, system can be obtained from [14, 15].
disaster areas such as earth quakes, etc. The autonomous spherical rolling robot, described in this
Despite these advantages, there are some problems that prevent paper, tried to differ from the previous designs. In this novel
spherical robot's development, such as complexity of the design, our main attention and criterion were better mobility,
robot's components; non-standard structural elements in order maneuverability and controllability. Firstly, the structures of
to fit within spherical exoskeleton and sophisticated coupled our previous spherical robot and its problems have been
nonlinear dynamic equations with nonholonomic constraints. mentioned and then new design was introduced. In section 2
In the recent years many of researchers has been attracted to the mechanical, electrical structure and motion principle of
study and develop different types of spherical robots. A review robot completely described while section 3 devoted to driving
of relevant topics in nonholonomic motion planning is given in kinematics of robot. Robot's dynamic model is derived by
tutorial notes edited by Laumond [1]. The tirst spherical robot using the Lagrange method in section 4�
with a single drive wheel structure inside the sphere was
proposed by Halme et al [2]. Sphere's turning was
accomplished by rotating the direction of this wheel. This
introduces the problem of detecting (and correcting) whether it

978-1-4673-0862-5/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA METROPOLITANA. Downloaded on November 08,2024 at 23:16:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 2. DESIGN

This robot is a developed version of our previous proposed This mechanism had an advantage ofOmni-directional motion.
spherical robot. In the following, the structure of new robot is Indeed it could roll in any direction without need to turn and
compared with our former spherical robot. achieve appropriate direction to continue its motion. But when
the robot was built and tested, some disorders in robot's motion
and problems were aroused that faded this advantage. These
2.1. Introduction of our former robot problems were been resulted from inevitable errors and slips
that occurs in robot's function in real condition not in ideal one.
our previous proposed robot propulsion mechanism shown in
Some of these problems can be summarized as: unwanted
Fig. 1 consists of three sets of electromotor and wheel that
motion and slip between IDU (inside driving unit) and
mounted on three connector bar which made 120 angle with
spherical shell because of colliding unpredicted obstacles,
each other. These Omni-wheels are in contact with inner
jagged and bumpy paths, and lack of sufficient friction between
surface of spherical shell and are implemented to create Omni­
driver wheels and inner surface of shell in high acceleration
directional movement. Omni-wheels provide traction in the
movement.
direction normal to the motor axis, while they can roll
To overcome drawbacks of previous similar structures and
passively in the direction of the motor axis without friction by
prevent these problems occurrence, a new structure is decided
use of smaller wheels attached along the outside edge of the
to design and built. In this new design problem of slip between
wheel. Each wheel provides a torque on the inner surface of
IDU and inner surface of spherical shell is completely
spherical shell in the direction normal to the motor axis. Due to
eliminated and experimental tests show a good improvement in
Fig. 2 it can be seen the robot's motion along a curved line
robot's function in the above mentioned conditions. This new
needs two motors activation.
mechanism was designed to enhance the robot's
maneuverability besides providing sufficient acceleration for
Driver universal wheels
robot's motion and better stability in the presence of
environmental disturbances.

2.2. Structure of new robot

The mobile robot presented in this paper has an external

spherical shape with 250 mm outer diameter as shown in the
Figure 3. Exoskeleton of the robot is made of a solid
transparent Plexiglas spherical shell in order to allow visibility
of inside to outside (Figure 4). Inner drive unit causes the robot
to roll freely on the floor. Beside on, all necessary electrical
parts and control system are implemented on the inner drive
unit. There are two metal rings attached to inner surface of the
spherical shell, where a timing belt glued on their insides. The
wheels of lDU are made from timing belt pulleys; hence they
can seat inside the rings and move without slip along them.
Figure 1. Spherical robot's inside driving unit (previous design) Because of its importance the IDU will be described in the next
section.

UU:lctn:lteti --------------.,...
(lIUe) whrels LiJ.le�n·l)olth of the robot

UIl:lChwtell
(lIUe) whrel

-----

(b)
Cm'vililleal' I',lth of the l' � � ""'"
,
,
�

Figure 2. a)Linear path and b) curvilinear path (previous design)

Figure 3. Robot main components

ISMAI2-2

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA METROPOLITANA. Downloaded on November 08,2024 at 23:16:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 Figure 5. Different components ofIDU

Stand axis This axis is a shaft that is located parallel to the

,

main diameter of spherical shell and has bearings on its both

side on the shell to stabilize the lDU in spherical shell.
There are two DC motors to drive the IDU and robot. Main
motor rotates two wheels around their common axis. Each
wheel seats inside the circular rings attached to the inner
surface of the spherical shell and cause to lift the robot's
gravity center from its equilibrium position. This movement of
the TDU induces the rolling ahead motion of the robot. The
second motor drives an offset mass along a screw parallel to
stand axis and causes the robot's turning and changing
direction while tracks a curvilinear path.
Transversal relocation of gravity center mechanism: This
mechanism includes a mass, a conductor screw which allows
the mass to track along it and a driving motor to propel the
mass. This mechanism induces transversal relocation of gravity
Figure 4. From above, assembled robot, IDU, control unit with outer
center by moving the mass in direction perpendicular to the
shell
robot's path. Tn other word robot tracks straight path while this
mechanism's mass remain at the center of shell, but when this
3. INNER DRIVE UNIT (JDU) mass moves transversally to the robot's path cause the robot to
turn and survey a curved path as shown in Figure 6. The radius
Tn this section TDU's all part's roll and function will be of this curved path depends on position and velocity of
discussed. The TDU is illustrated in Figure 5. This new mechanism's mass.
mechanism has great advantages to previous similar spherical
robots that have been implemented wheel based lDU to change
the robot's center of gravity. So it could overcome to their
drawbacks such as slippage and instability, consequently the
robot can track all paths with higher accuracy. Tn designing the
mechanism it was tried to achieve more simplicity and stability
and to produce maximum distance between TDU's gravity
center and geometric center of sphere. The robot's IDU works
on the basis of center of mass relocation in two perpendicular
directions.
Different components of IDU as propulsion system include: Figure 6. Location of gravity center along curved path
Driving wheels, They are made from solid plastic and their
outer circumferences are dentate such that be appropriate to
4. ELECTRONIC HARDWARE
timing belt mounted on spherical shell. So they can act as
jagged pulley and produce a contact without slip by timing belt.
By adding this feature the slippery between lDU and shell The electronic hardware of robot has two main parts. The first
completely will be eliminated and just rolling contact will exist. part is mounted in the inner part of spherical robot. It is
Consequently the errors of robot's motion will be minimized. implemented to receive data and control the stepper motors by
Main motor, an electric motor that is coupled with both wheels generating proper PWM pulses. The other part is a remote
and supply necessary power to roll them. controller with wireless transmitter. This controller has an
interface with PC to get the robot path and programs.
Meanwhile, it can send the speed of motors to trace the desired

TSMAI2-3

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA METROPOLITANA. Downloaded on November 08,2024 at 23:16:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 path. Moreover, using the keypad on it, the operator can of nodes for nutation angle e measured from vertical z' to the z
override the motors speed. axis. The xyz reference frame is defined to execute the nutation
Electronic hardware inside of the robot includes three parts of relative to xyz , with the z and z axes always coincident. The
1) micro controller unit, 2) driving unit and 3) high frequency velocity of the sphere Vs, TDU � and, offset mass Vm can be
electronic unit. In first unit an AVR microcontroller from derived by differentiating their corresponding position vectors
ATmega16 family with 16KB Flash memory and 512 bytes in inertial reference frame. For representing all position vectors
EEPROM at frequency 16 MHz were used. Selection of this in inertial reference frame three rotation matrixes should be
microcontroller is based on its improved capability to program defined as follow:
and interface with other peripheral devices, powerful
instructions and its low price.
C1/J
[� 51/J 0 [0 Cf} o

Tn driving unit two isolated PWM generators and power stages

T", = - 1/J C1/J o To = 1

for driving stepper motors were used. It must be mentioned that

o 1] Sf} o
[ C0 50
an independent power supply was used for motor drives to
-50 C0 (I)
reduce noise effect on other parts of the circuit.
o 0 �]
In a third unit a receiver module at frequency 915 MHz was
used, with enabling/disabling capability to reduce power Where C=Cos and S=Sin. So the velocities will be:
consumption.
The remote control module, which its components
schematically are shown in Figure. 7 has these parts: I) CPU:
An ATmegaS microcontroller is used for getting the keypad
entries and sending the proper signals to receiver module. 2)
Display: a 2 x 16 alphanumeric LCD is used for displaying o OJ}/
information. 3) ISP: An ISP interface for preprogramming is (2)
! dt
used. This interface also may be used for getting the data of a
desired path. 4) Transmitter module: The remote control
transmitter module in 915 MHz can transmit the data in
maximum 300 meters distance. An enable pin on this module
o 0 J}/!
dt
can switch off transmitter if after 70ms no data has been
transmitted. 5) Keypad: This keypad is implemented for
manual control of the robot. All parameters used, are shown in the FigURE S.
Z, z'

Keypad ISP Interface

transmitter

Figure 7. Block diagram of the manual control

5. DYNAMICS OF THE ROBOT

It is known that inner mass dynamics is coupled with spherical

shell dynamics. Hence, for finding driving motors joint
variables to guide the robot in a given trajectory, inner mass
dynamic equations must simultaneously be solved with
spherical shell dynamic equation set. So robot simulation and
control needs to obtain the kinematic equations as well as
dynamic equation.

5.1. Kinematics
Figure 8. Coordinate system definition
By adopting Euler-Lagrange Equations for the system
dynamics, we need to obtain velocity of robot's components. Tn 5.2. Dynamic equations
the Fig. 7, several reference frames are depicted. We place the
origin of the body-fixed coordinate system XYZ at the sphere Now Lagrange method with constraints can be implemented to
center, and xyz origin is coincident with XYZ while the z axis obtain robot's governing equations. Recall that the Lagrange
is vertical and the y axis is always parallel to the robot path and equation in nonholonomic constrained, generalized coordinates
horizontal. The angle between y and J for the fixed reference is written as
frame is defined to be the precession angle 1/J, and y is the line

TSMAI2-4

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA METROPOLITANA. Downloaded on November 08,2024 at 23:16:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.
 (3) [4] Bicchi, A, Camicia, c., Conticelli, F.: Nonholonomic
Kinematics and Dynamics of the Sphericle, Proceedings of

Where, q is a set of independent variable that describes the the 2000 IEEE/RSJ international Conference on Intelligent
system configuration, the Lagrangian L(q, q,) is the difference Robots and Systems, 2000.
of the kinetic energy and potential energy i.e. L(q, q) T(q, q)
�
[5] Mukhet:iee, R., Minor, M.A., Pukrushpan, J.T.: Motion
- V (q), Q is the vector of the generalized forces, and A is an k Planning for a Spherical Mobile Robot: Revisiting the

x n matrix that represents the k nonholonomic constraints in the

Classical Ball-Plate Problem, Transactions of the ASME,

so called Pfaftian form (i.e. the velocities appear linearly in the December 2002.
matrix equations): [6] Mukherjee, R., Das, T.: Feedback Stabilization of a
Spherical Mobile Robot Proceedings of the 2002 IEEEIRSJ
A(q) x q = 0 (4) International Conference on Intelligent Robots and
Systems, Octobor 2002.
There are 8 generalized coordinates (<p, e, �, \If, R"Xs' Ys' Zs)
[7] Javadi, A A H., Mojabi, P.: introducing August: A Novel
and 1 holonomic and 2 nonholonomic constraints. so we will
Strategy for an Omnidirectional Spherical Rolling Robot,
have 5 equations besides 2 nonholonomic constraints that
Proceedings of the 2002 IEEE International Conference on
should be satisfied.
Robotics and Automation, May 2002.
Assuming non slip condition between the robot and horizontal
[8] Koshiyama, A and Yamafuji, K. Design and control of an
surface, yields to three constraints, as
all-direction steering type mobile robot. Int. J. Robotics
Xs - Rs<psimpsin8 - Rs8<pcosl/J = 0 Res., 1993, 12(5), 411-419.
[9] Heggelund, F., Rydland, P., Kj0nigsen, J., Berntsen,
Ys + Rs<pcosl/Jsin8 - Rs8<psinl/J = 0 (5) P.,l.,B., HUS0Y, K.: Fjernstyrt kule, Assignment in course
'SIE 0101 Experts in Team' at NTNU, 2002.
is = 0
[10] L. Ferriere, G. Campion, B. Raucent, Rollmobs: A new
These relations are three velocity constraints that the eight drive system for omnimobile robots, IEEE International
position variables must satisfy, so the robot has only five Conference on Robotics and Automation, (1998), pp.
degrees of freedom. The first two equations are 1877-1882.
nonholonomic. However, the one governing Z may be [II] B. Chemel, E. Mutschler, H. Schempf, Cyclops: Miniature
integrated. Integrating the third velocity equation leads to: robotic reconnaissance system, IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation 3 (May) (1999)
(6)
2298-2302.
This configuration constraint enables us to eliminate Z from the [12] T. Ylikorpi, J. Suomela, Ball shaped robots: An historical
formulation. Hence, we employ seven generalized coordinates. overview and recent development at TKK, Field and
These are constrained generalized coordinates because they Service Robotics 25 (6) (2006) 343-354.
must satisfy the first two of Eqs. 5. Therefore, complete [13] R.H. Armour, J.F.V. Vincent, Rolling in nature and
dynamic model of robot is known. robotics: A review, Journal of Bionic Engineering 3
(December) (2006) 195-208.
[14] T. Das, R. Mukherjee, Exponential stabilization of the
rolling sphere, Automatica 40 (June) (2004) 1877-1889.
6. CONCLUSIONS [15] T. Das, R. Mukherjee, Reconfiguration of a rolling sphere:
A problem in evolute-involute geometry, ASME Journal
of Applied Mechanics 73 (July) (2006),590-597.
The structure of a novel driving mechanism for a spherical
robot has been introduced. The mechanical structure of this
robot is such that, its driving mechanism is placed inside of a
hollow spherical case. This system is more reliable and more
stable than previous similar ones. Hence, relative slip between
the inner mechanism and spherical case is prevented and results
more precise control of the robot in its predefined trajectory.
Deriving coupled dynamics and kinematics equations of the
robot with nonholonomic constraints, will smooth the progress
of robot's control and trajectory planning.

REFERENCES

[I] Laumond, J.P., 'Nonholonomic Motion Planning for

Robots', Tutorial Notes, IEEE International Conference on
Robotics and Automation, Springer, 1998.
[2] Halme, A, Schonberg, T., Wang, Y.: Motion control of a
spherical mobile robot, Proceedings of 4th International
Workshop on Advanced Motion Control, 1996
[3] Bicchi, A, Balluchi, A, Prattichizzo, D., Gorelli, A:
Introducing the Sphericle: An Experimental testbed for
research and teaching in non-holonomy, Proceedings of
the 1997 IEEE International Conference on Robotics and
Automation, 1997

ISMAI2-5

Authorized licensed use limited to: UNIVERSIDAD AUTONOMA METROPOLITANA. Downloaded on November 08,2024 at 23:16:01 UTC from IEEE Xplore. Restrictions apply.