Mathematical Modeling and Motion Analysis of the Wheel Based Ball Retaining Mechanism

The sphere kinematics has been discussed in the research field of multi-fingers grasping, mobile robot motion control driven by a sphere, ball handling, etc. In the multi-fingers grasping problem, a sphere and a plane correspond to a spherical finger and a cuboid object are used and the contact points of the sphere are analyzed. The mobile robot driven by a sphere is modeled as an inverted pendulum using a ball, and can move in any direction without changing orientation. The ball handling mechanism is discussed in the RoboCup soccer robot, which enables the robot to carry a ball with it. We consider that these problems are categorized as sphere kinematics, the relation between velocities of contact points and sphere motion, and discuss the sphere motion driven by two-wheel actuator with arbitral contact points on the sphere.