Kunal Goyal(09BEC359) Ravi Kumar(09BEI044)

The idea of self-balancing robots had gain popularity among robotics and automation researchers worldwide over last few decades. This paper aims at development and analysis of a robot balancing on a spherical ball which can not only stand still but also traverse on floor and pivot around its axis. This design conveys high maneuverability in crowded spaces and easy interaction with human environment. The model discussed in this paper uses 3 Omni-directional wheels driven by servomotors. The balancing is achieved by the fusion of dual-axis gyroscope, triple-axis accelerometer by Kalman filter technique and PID controller. The Robot is controlled by a 16bit microcontroller and runs on Ni-MH batteries..

Multi-wheel statically-stable mobile robots tall enough to interact meaningfully with people must have low centers of gravity, wide bases of support, and low accelerations to avoid tipping over. These conditions present a number of performance limitations. Accordingly, we are developing an inverse of this type of mobile robot that is the height, width, and weight of a person, having a high center of gravity, that balances dynamically on a single spherical wheel. Unlike balancing 2-wheel platforms which must turn before driving in some direction, the single-wheel robot can move directly in any direction.

Minimum Turning Radius High Maneuverability Less Rolling Friction High Agility

The Spherical Wheel Servo motors Omni Wheels Rotary Encoders Microcontroller Sensors(IMU implementation)
Accelerometer Gyroscope

Control Systems
Kalman Filter PID Control System

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P 1 P3

Initially when the robot is switched on the control system tries to align the center of gravity to the point of contact between the floor and the ball. When an offset is given to the robot, it initially leans forwards and moves and then slowly retreats to original straight position. Similarly, while stopping it leans back and slowly gets back to its initial position. The movement is agile and looks similar to roller skating. The robot is made to pivot around it vertical axis by moving all the motor in same direction with same speeds.

 The unique characteristics of a ballbot open a wide range of practical applications. Dynamic stability allows its uses in crowded environments like trains, ships etc. Its omni-directionality makes it suitable for quick navigation in grid-based systems. Its high center of gravity allows unique perspective in human interaction. It is most suitable in public information, daily aid or a service robot. However, so far ballbots are still matter of research.

 The robot discussed in this paper merely focuses on motion and design analysis but in future certain sensors can be added for the intelligent interaction with human environment. Artificial Intelligence can be employed to widen its application in public information, daily aid or as a service robot. Various design parameters can be altered such as the friction between ball and floor, friction between wheels and ball, size of the ball, location of center of gravity, number of wheels can also be changed. Machine vision and AI can make it more suitable in human interaction.

 T.B.Lauwers, G.A.Kantor, R.L.Hollis, A Dynamically Stable Single-Wheeled Mobile Robot with Inverse Mouse-Ball Drive, ,2006 Masaaki Kumaga, Takaya Ochiai, Development of Robot balanced on ball,2009 Rezero, ETH, Zurich A. Warnasch, and A. Killen, Low cost, high G, micro electro-mechanical systems (MEMS), inertial measurements unit (IMU) program, IEEE Position Location and Navigation Symposium, 2002 D. Simon, Kalman filtering with state constraints: A survey of linear and nonlinear algorithms, IET Proceedings in Control Theory & Applications M. A. Johnson, and M. H. Moradi, PID Control: New Identification and Design Methods. Springer, 2005. Ching-Wen Liao, Ching-Chih Tsai, Yi Yu Li, Cheng-Kai Chan , Dynamic Modeling and Sliding-Mode Control of a Ball Robot with Inverse Mouse-Ball Drive,2008 Umashankar Nagarajan, George Kantor and Ralph L. Hollis, Trajectory Planning and Control of an Under actuated Dynamically Stable Single Spherical Wheeled Mobile Robot H. Benjamin Brown, Jr. and Yangsheng Xu, A single wheel, gyroscopically stabilized robot