On the dynamic model and motion planning for a class of spherical rolling robots

The paper deals with the dynamics and motion planning for a spherical rolling robot actuated by internal rotors that are placed on orthogonal axes. The driving principle for such a robot exploits non-holonomic constraints to propel the rolling carrier. The full mathematical model as well as its reduced version are derived, and the inverse dynamics is addressed. It is shown that if the rotors are mounted on three orthogonal axes, any feasible kinematic trajectory of the rolling robot is dynamically realizable. For the case of only two orthogonal axes of the actuation the condition of dynamic realizability of a feasible kinematic trajectory is established. The implication of this condition to motion planning in dynamic formulation is explored under a case study. It is shown there that in maneuvering the robot by tracing circles on the sphere surface the dynamically realizable trajectories are essentially different from those resulted from kinematic models.