Dynamic modeling and sliding-mode control of a Ball robot with inverse mouse-ball drive

This paper presents techniques for dynamic modeling and control of a Ball robot (Ballbot) with inverse mouse-ball drive that is accomplished by simultaneously activating two independent brushless motors. Under this driving scheme, a completely dynamic model of the robot moving in a flat terrain is established constructed based on Lagrangian mechanics. With the model, a sliding-mode control is proposed based on backstepping to accomplish robust balancing and agile path tracking of the robot with exogenous disturbances. Computer simulations are conducted for illustration of the effectiveness of the proposed modeling and control method.