Closed Loop Control of Unstable Omni Directional Assisting System

Traditional wheeled mobile robots are equipped with two independent driving wheels. Since these robots have two controllable degrees of freedom (DOFs), they can rotate about any point, but cannot perform immediate motion in every direction. To overcome this type of motion limitation, omnidirectional mobile robots were proposed. They can move in an arbitrary direction without changing the direction of the wheels, because they can achieve five DOF-motion on a two dimensional plane. A special kind of such a robot is a Ball-Balancing Robot (BBR). This system is inherently unstable, as it will immediately fall down when no active control is applied to the wheels on the ball. There is no need to rotate the robot body when change the driving direction of the ball robot, so it is suitable for cluttered environments. The proposed work is intended to be used as an assistant robot in offices, airports, shopping complexes where there is a lot of congestion in the surroundings. It is also equipped with a kinect sensor for providing vision capabilities using which it could simultaneously localize itself and map its surroundings (SLAM) that would result in a seamless motion. Thus BBR would be able to smoothly move and avoid obstacles and provide the necessary assistance.