KisBot II : New Spherical Robot with Curved Two-pendulum Driving Mechanism

Due to the limited pendulum motion range, the conventional one-pendulum driven spherical robot has limited driving capability. Especially it can not drive parallel direction with center horizontal axis to which pendulum is attached from stationary state. To overcome the limited driving capability of one-pendulum driven spherical robot, we introduce a spherical robot, called KisBot II, with a new type of curved two-pendulum driving mechanism. A cross-shape frame of the robot is located horizontally in the center of the robot. The main axis of the frame is connected to the outer shell, and each curved pendulum is connected to the end of the other axis of the frame respectively. The main axis and pendulums can rotate 360 degrees inside the sphere orthogonally without interfering with each other, also the two pendulums can rotate identically or independent of each other. Due to this driving mechanism, KisBot II has various motion generation abilities, including a fast steering, turning capability in place and during travelling, and four directions including forward, backward, left, and right from stationary status. Experiments for several motions verify the driving efficiency of the proposed spherical robot.

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