Development of a ball balancing robot with omni wheels

Abstract

The main goal for this master thesis project was to create a robot balancing on a ball with the help of omni wheels. The robot was developed from scratch. The work covered everything from mechanical design, dynamic modeling, control design, sensor fusion, identifying parameters by experimentation to implementation on a microcontroller. The robot has three omni wheels in a special configuration at the bottom. The task to stabilize the robot is based on the simplified model of controlling a spherical inverted pendulum in the xy-plane with state feedback control. The model has accelerations in the bottom in the x- and y-directions as inputs. The controlled outputs are the angle and angular velocity around the x- and y-axes and the position and speed along the same axes. The goal to stabilize the robot in an upright position and keep it located around the starting point was successfully achieved.