A Deformable Spherical Robot with Two Arms

In this paper, we present a new type of spherical robot having two arms. This robot, called KisBot, mechanically consists of three parts, a wheel-shaped body and two rotating semi-spheres. In side of each semi-sphere, there exists an arm which is designed based on slider-crank mechanism for space efficiency. KisBot has hybrid types of driving mode: rolling and wheeling. In the rolling mode, the robot folds its arms through inside of itself and uses them as pendulum, then the robot works like a pendulum-driven robot. In the wheeling mode, two arms are extended from inside of the robot and are contacted to the ground, then the robot works like a one-wheel car. The Robot arms can be used as a brake during rolling mode and add friction to the robot for climbing a slope during wheeling mode. We developed a remote controlled type robot for experiment. It contains two DC motors which are located in the center of each semi-sphere for main propulsion, two RC motors for each arm operation, speed controllers for each semi-sphere, batteries for main power source, and other mechanical components. Experiments for the rolling and wheeling mode verify the hybrid driving ability and efficiency of the our proposed spherical robot.