Design and Control of an All-Direction Steering Type Mobile Robot

Abstract

This article describes a new type of mobile robot that has a spherical wheel, an arched body, and motion-controlling mech anisms installed inside the wheel. The robot can travel in every direction and perform unique actions by virtue of the wheel and the motion-controlling mechanisms. We call the latter the Inside Wheel Balancing System (IWBS). Postural stability con trol, omnidirectional steering, and locomotion of the robot were achieved by means of the compound gravity center feedback control. Postural stability and traveling control on a slope and on a flat plane were also attained experimentally. The experimental results coincide well with those obtained by the simulation performed on a personal computer. The omnidirec tion traveling robot proposed here provides great possibility to the mobile robots in the manufacturing and nonmanufacturing environments.