Initial results for a ballbot driven with a spherical induction motor

Abstract

We give a system overview and initial experimental results for SIMbot (spherical induction motor based ballbot), a human-sized dynamically stable mobile robot with only two active moving parts. SIMbot is a qualitatively new kind of robot with the potential to drastically reduce mechanical complexity in human-sized mobile robots. SIMbot uses a novel spherical induction motor as its drive mechanism, which is mechanically simpler than other ballbot drive mechanisms. We demonstrate the feasibility of this innovation with experimental results for balancing, stationkeeping, short point-to-point motions, and recovery from initial lean angles.