Omnidirectional Locomotion Control of a Pendulum Driven Spherical Robot

This paper proposes a method for omnidirectional locomotion control of a pendulum driven spherical robot. Two continuous rotation actuators control the orientation of a pendulum within the spherical shell. The control system generates desired actuator angles to move the pendulum in the direction of the desired motion in reference to an assumed inertial frame. Additionally, partial feedback linearizion of the under-actuated nonlinear system aids in driving the actuator angles to the desired angles. The dynamics of the robot were derived using the Euler-Lagrange formulation and simulated to verify the functionality of the controller. The simulations show the proposed control method is capable of performing directional and set-point control of the robot.