Development of a planar BBot using a single vibration motor

Abstract

There are BBots (BristleBots) consist of a single and double vibration motor design. A single-actuated robot agent is more preferable due to its lower cost and energy consumption. Some studies reporting and modeling the linear motion single-actuated BBots are present in the literature. On the other hand, few of them included an explanation on its rotational motion. In this study, the planar motion of a novel single-actuated BBot design, composed of three bristle legs is analyzed. The BBot performs CW (clockwise) motion under a transition frequency (ftr), forward locomotion at ftr and CCW (counterclockwise) motion over it. The mechanism behind this novel observation is inspected experimentally and results are reported. Proposed design performed a path following task with an open loop control.