Design and Analysis of a Spherical Robot with Rolling and Jumping Modes for Deep Space Exploration

Wang, Futao; Li, Chaobing; Niu, Shaohua; Wang, Pengfei; Wu, Huaisong; Li, Bingyang

doi:10.3390/machines10020126

Cited by 15 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…Additionally, a mechanism was designed to facilitate a collaborative map exploration for a single- and multi-robot system. A simulation successfully demonstrated the efficiency of the proposed technique, which produced a new deep space exploration method for rolling and jumping spherical robots [ 36 ]. The structure design was described, and its viable motion was tested through an established dynamic model.…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Robot Exploration of Unknown Space Using Combined Meta-Heuristic Salp Swarm Algorithm and Deterministic Coordinated Multi-Robot Exploration

Romeh

Mirjalili

2023

Sensors

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Multi-robot exploration means constructing a finite map using a group of robots in an obstacle chaotic space. Uncertainties are reduced by distributing search tasks to robots and computing the best action in real time. Many previous methods are based on deterministic or meta-heuristic algorithms, but limited work has combined both techniques to consolidate both classes’ benefits and alleviate their drawbacks. This paper proposes a new hybrid method based on deterministic coordinated multi-robot exploration (CME) and the meta-heuristic salp swarm algorithm (SSA) to perform the search of a space. The precedence of adjacent cells around a robot is determined by deterministic CME using cost and utility. Then, the optimization process of the search space, improving the overall solution, is achieved utilizing the SSA. Three performance measures are considered to evaluate the performance of the proposed method: run time, percentage of the explored area, and the number of times when a method failed to continue a complete run. Experimental results compared four different methods, CME-GWO, CME-GWOSSA, CME-SCA, and CME, over seven maps with extra complexity varying from simple to complex. The results demonstrate how the proposed CME-SSA can outperform the four other methods. Moreover, the simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CME-SSA effectively distributes the robots over the search space to run successfully and obtain the highest exploration rate in less time.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

Multi-Robot Exploration of Unknown Space Using Combined Meta-Heuristic Salp Swarm Algorithm and Deterministic Coordinated Multi-Robot Exploration

Romeh

Mirjalili

2023

Sensors

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“…39,40 The shell of the spherical robot is generally made of hard materials, while the soft spherical shell is deformable and lighter, and the jumping height is higher than the hard spherical shell, but the rolling controllability is poor. 41 In 2022, for the complex and unknown terrain in deep space exploration, Wang et al 42 proposed a multi motion mode spherical robot (as shown in Figure 7). The robot rolls through a pendulum and a two degree of freedom rotating frame, and jumps through an internal spring mechanism.…”

Section: Jumping Ballmentioning

confidence: 99%

Special spherical mobile robot for planetary surface exploration: A review

Gao

et al. 2023

International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems

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Considering the requirements of high scientific return, low cost, less complexity, and more reliability for the robot proposed by the extreme environment exploration task on the planet surface, this article comprehensively reviews the history of the special spherical robot used for extraterrestrial surface exploration and summarizes the environmental characteristics and task difficulties of different planet surface. This article compares the advantages of different types of ground spherical robots and points out the superiority of special spherical robots, such as omni-direction, airtightness, zero-radius turning, under-actuated, swarming, and lightweight. In addition, the research progress of special spherical robots for extraterrestrial exploration, such as wind ball, jumping ball, fly ball, ball with leg, pendulum driven ball, tensegrity structure, are reviewed respectively. Finally, the performance characteristics of all these robots are analyzed, their application scope given.

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“…The jumping drive module primarily consists of a mechanism box and two six-bar mechanisms, which enable the robot to jump. The specific structural design can be found in our previous work [11].…”

Section: Design Of the Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The rolling drive module consists of two racks and three motors, which ar to drive the robot forward, backward, and steer. The jumping drive module pri consists of a mechanism box and two six-bar mechanisms, which enable the robot to The specific structural design can be found in our previous work [11].…”

Section: Design Of the Structurementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consequently, they have attracted many researchers and have been widely used in the detection of unknown environments [2], environmental monitoring [3,4], surveillance [5], and other fields [6]. Based on the single-motion mode [7][8][9], researchers have gradually developed spherical robots with multi-motion modes, such as rolling and jumping, rolling and crawling, and others [10][11][12][13]. The multi-motion mode further expands the application of spherical robots in environmental detection tasks.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Velocity Control of a Multi-Motion Mode Spherical Probe Robot Based on Reinforcement Learning

Cao³

et al. 2023

Applied Sciences

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As deep space exploration tasks become increasingly complex, the mobility and adaptability of traditional wheeled or tracked probe robots with high functional density are constrained in harsh, dangerous, or unknown environments. A practical solution to these challenges is designing a probe robot for preliminary exploration in unknown areas, which is characterized by robust adaptability, simple structure, light weight, and minimal volume. Compared to the traditional deep space probe robot, the spherical robot with a geometric, symmetrical structure shows better adaptability to the complex ground environment. Considering the uncertain detection environment, the spherical robot should brake rapidly after jumping to avoid reentering obstacles. Moreover, since it is equipped with optical modules for deep space exploration missions, the spherical robot must maintain motion stability during the rolling process to ensure the quality of photos and videos captured. However, due to the nonlinear coupling and parameter uncertainty of the spherical robot, it is tedious to adjust controller parameters. Moreover, the adaptability of controllers with fixed parameters is limited. This paper proposes an adaptive proportion–integration–differentiation (PID) control method based on reinforcement learning for the multi-motion mode spherical probe robot (MMSPR) with rolling and jumping. This method uses the soft actor–critic (SAC) algorithm to adjust the parameters of the PID controller and introduces a switching control strategy to reduce static error. As the simulation results show, this method can facilitate the MMSPR’s convergence within 0.02 s regarding motion stability. In addition, in terms of braking, it enables an MMSPR with random initial speed brake within a convergence time of 0.045 s and a displacement of 0.0013 m. Compared with the PID method with fixed parameters, the braking displacement of the MMSPR is reduced by about 38%, and the convergence time is reduced by about 20%, showing better universality and adaptability.

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Design and Analysis of a Spherical Robot with Rolling and Jumping Modes for Deep Space Exploration

Cited by 15 publications

References 14 publications

Multi-Robot Exploration of Unknown Space Using Combined Meta-Heuristic Salp Swarm Algorithm and Deterministic Coordinated Multi-Robot Exploration

Multi-Robot Exploration of Unknown Space Using Combined Meta-Heuristic Salp Swarm Algorithm and Deterministic Coordinated Multi-Robot Exploration

Special spherical mobile robot for planetary surface exploration: A review

Velocity Control of a Multi-Motion Mode Spherical Probe Robot Based on Reinforcement Learning

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