Position and attitude control of a spherical rolling robot equipped with a gyro

This paper deals with the problem of controlling the position and attitude of a spherical rolling robot. The driving torque for the rolling robot is generated by a new type of mechanism equipped with a gyro. We derive two types of models, a kinematic model and a dynamic model, from the equations of motion for the robot. A feedback controller for the kinematic model is designed by using our previous method that is based on Lyapunov control. And then, from the controller, we obtain a feedback controller for the dynamic model by backstepping technique. The effectiveness of both controllers is demonstrated by numerical simulations