2020/01/22 by Junjie Shen, Dennis Hong, Shen, Junjie +1
Computer Science · Engineering · #Control and Dynamics of Mobile Robots #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Robotic Locomotion and Control #Robotic Path Planning Algorithms #Robotics (cs.RO)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2001.07856
openalex publication_date 2020/01/22 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
A mobility mechanism for robots to be used in tight spaces shared with people requires it to have a small footprint, to move omnidirectionally, as well as to be highly maneuverable. However, currently there exist few such mobility mechanisms that satisfy all these conditions well. Here we introduce Omnidirectional Balancing Unicycle Robot (OmBURo), a novel unicycle robot with active omnidirectional wheel. The effect is that the unicycle robot can drive in both longitudinal and lateral directions simultaneously. Thus, it can dynamically balance itself based on the principle of dual-axis wheeled inverted pendulum. This letter discloses the early development of this novel unicycle robot involving the overall design, modeling, and control, as well as presents some preliminary results including station keeping and path following. With its very compact structure and agile mobility, it might be the ideal locomotion mechanism for robots to be used in human environments in the future.