Design and Implementation of a Deformable Spherical Robot With Rolling and Jumping Capabilities

We designed and implemented a novel compressible spherical robot capable of omnidirectional rolling and jumping locomotion. Instead of using spring for energy storage and additional jumping mechanism for jumping, the robot's shell is optimized to synergistically combine rolling support, energy storage, and jumping capability, as well as enabling the spherical robot to adjust its jumping angle and direction in place. The characteristic of deformation and energy storage of the shell is evaluated in simulation and discussed, which can be a design guideline for the compressible shell. The dynamic model of the robot is derived, and energy loss during jumping is discussed. The robot was empirically built, and its performance was experimentally evaluated. The robot can achieve a compression ratio of up to 31%, which, to the best of our knowledge, is the best among the reported spherical robot. To maintain uniform mass distribution, the robot's maximum vertical jump height is constrained to 0.6 times its diameter. However, it achieves a horizontal leap spanning 1.5 times its diameter, which is crucial for spherical robots to traverse of openings and gaps.