Ball Balancing Robot: construction, modeling and control design

Abstract

Ball Balancing Robots (BBRs) are a class of robots capable to balance themselves over a sphere. With the right modeling and planning of trajectories, they can move towards every direction in the horizontal plane of movement. This work gathers construction aspects, modeling and design of a stabilizing controller. Modeling a BBR is a complex work, since they are often under-actuated systems and the actuators are not aligned with the coordinates system, making necessary torques and velocities transformations. Practical results are presented in order to validate the modeling and control design.