Research on underwater robots is attracting increased attention around the world. Various kinds of underwater robots have been developed, using an assortment of shapes, sizes, weights, and propulsion methods. In this paper, we propose a novel underwater robot, employing a spherical hull and equipped with multiple vectored water-jet-based thrusters. The overall design of the robot is first intro...

This paper depicts the structural design of a novel water-jet-based spherical underwater robot. The propulsion system is made up of four water-jet thrusters and 8 steering servo motors which can adjust the polydirectional shift of thrusters nozzle to achieve 4-degrees-of-freedom (4-DOF) motion. Every two thrusters nozzles formed an angle of 90 degree in one plane. A bilayer structure was adopte...

Spherical mobile robot (SMR) has been studied analytically and experimentally in this paper, a novel design with an internal propulsion mechanism and mathematical models of the robot’s dynamics and kinematics are introduced. A 3D model of robot is built by SOLIDWORKS and then exported to ADAMS2007 for simulation. The results of simulation by combining MATLAB / SIMULINK with ADAMS are presented....

The paper adopts a geometric approach to stabilization and tracking of a spherical robot actuated by three internal rotors mounted on three mutually orthogonal axes inside the robot. The system is underactuated and subject to nonholonomic constraints. Initially, the equations of motion are derived through Euler-Poincaré reduction. Then two feedback control laws are synthesized: the first contro...

Designing a mobile robotic toy is challenging work. The robot must be appealing to children and create interesting interactions while facing the wide variety of situations that can be experienced while playing with a child, and all at a reasonable cost. In this paper we present Roball, a ball-shaped robot that moves by making its external spherical shell rotate. Such design for a mobile robotic...

Robot manipulators are built to meet certain pre-determined performance requirements. The question of whether the robot will have the desired functionality (e.g. dexterity, accuracy, reliability, speed, etc.) needs to be answered before the robot is actually built. We have developed a software package that can greatly ease the design of a generic 6-DOF manipulator with a spherical wrist. Our pa...

A mobile robot toy must be designed to be capable of facing the variety of situations that can be experienced in a household environment, while still be appealing to children and create interesting and meaningful interactions, all at a reasonable cost. In this paper we present Roball, a rolling robot. Children are used to play with ball-shaped objects, making Roball implicitly appealing. In add...