Reduced dynamical equations for barycentric spherical robots

Abstract

Barycentric spherical robots (BSRs) rely on a noncollocated center of mass and center of rotation for propulsion. Unique challenges inherent to BSRs include a nontrivial correlation between internal actuation, momentum, and net vehicle motion. A new method is presented for deriving reduced dynamical equations of motion (EOM) for a general class of BSRs which extends and synthesizes prior efforts in geometric mechanics. Our method is an extension of the BKMM approach [1], allowing Lagrangian reduction and reconstruction to be applied to dynamical systems with symmetry-breaking potential energies, such as those encountered by BSRs rolling on a surface. The resulting dynamical equations are of minimal dimension and vehicle motion due to actuation and momenta appear linearly in a simple first-order differential equation. The EOM of a BSR named Moball [2] [3] are derived to illustrate the approach's utility. A simple table summarizes our algorithm's application to popular BSRs in the literature, and the approach is extended to sloped terrains