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Herrera-Cordero
Posgrade Division,
Universidad Tecnologica de la Mixteca,
Oaxaca 69000, Mexico
Cosimulation and Control of a
e-mail: herrera.enrique.09@gs.utm.mx
Single-Wheel Pendulum Mobile
Manuel Arias-Montiel1
Institute of Electronics and Mechatronics,
Universidad Tecnologica de la Mixteca,
Robot
Oaxaca 69000, Mexico Cosimulation is widely used as a powerful tool for performance evaluation of systems
1
Corresponding author.
Contributed by the Mechanisms and Robotics Committee of ASME for publication 2 Materials and Methods
in the JOURNAL OF MECHANISMS AND ROBOTICS. Manuscript received March 7, 2021; final
manuscript received May 20, 2021; published online July 6, 2021. Assoc. Editor: 2.1 Robot Design and Virtual Prototype. The robot design is
Renato Vidoni. based on the barycenter offset driving principle. In the proposed
Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics Copyright © 2021 by ASME OCTOBER 2021, Vol. 13 / 050909-1
SWROB system, the mass distribution of the robots is shifted by an
internal mechanism to move the robot from one equilibrium posi-
tion to another. This principle has been implemented in several
locomotion systems of spherical robots as pointed out in Ref. [7].
In this article, the robot is only designed for forward and back-
ward movement on a straight trajectory, and the mass distribution
is shifted by a movement of an inertial pendulum driven by a CD
micromotor with internal spur gears mechanisms. The mechanical
elements of the SWROB are shown in Fig. 1. The robot structure
is mainly composed by robot housing (1) considered as a cylindrical
tube, and in practice, it was obtained by eight 3D-printed pieces;
two base discs (2), which is used as a support for all the mechanical
Ẋ = Rc θ̇ (1)
where Rc is the radius of the robot housing and θ̇ is the robot angular
velocity.
The system’s kinetic and potential energies can be computed by
an analysis with elements depending on the variable θ and sepa-
rately, with the elements depending on θ and α as follows. The ele-
ments depending on the variable θ are the robot housing, the base
discs, the bolts, and the internal gears (see Fig. 5). Their kinetic
and potential energies can be expressed as follows:
1
T1 = [mc R2c + md R2c + mcor R2c + Ic + Icor
2
2
+ 8(mbolt (L2q + R2c ) + Ibolt )]θ̇ (2)
2
V1 = mc gRc + md g(Rc − Rd ) + mcor g(Rc − Rcor ) + 8mbolt gLq θ̇ (3)
Fig. 1 A conceptual design of the SWROB: Robot housing (1),
two base discs (2), base pendulum (3), pendulum (4), ground- where Lq is the distance from the bolt axis to the rotation axis of the
contact disc (5), and eight bolts (6) wheel, mc is the robot housing mass, md is the base discs mass, mcor
is the internal gears mass, mbolt is a bolt mass, and Ic, Id, Icor, and
Ibolt denote the corresponding moment of inertia.
The elements depending on the variables α and θ are the pendu-
lum and its base (the composed pendulum) with mass center in Ctm
with the coordinates Xctm and Yctm as shown in Fig. 5. The kinetic
and potential energies of the pendulum can be expressed as follows:
1
T2 = mcomp R2c θ̇ + mcomp ẊDctm cos(θ2 )θ˙2
2
2
1 1
+ mcomp D2ctm θ˙2 + Ictm θ˙2
2 2
(4)
2 2
gies of the pendulum mc R2c + md R2c + mcor R2c + 4(mbolt (L2q + R2c )) + Ic + Id + Icor + 8Ibolt .
y = Cx + Du b2 s2 + b1 s + b0
(11) G2 (s) = (14)
s3 + a2 s2 + a1 s + a0
where
Numerical values for the parameters of the linearized system model
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ in Eqs. (10) and (11) and for the robot velocity transfer function in
x1δ a11 a12 a13 a14
⎢x ⎥ ⎢a a24 ⎥
Eq. (14) are presented in Table 2, and they are obtained by consid-
⎢ 2δ ⎥ ⎢ 21 a22 a23 ⎥
x = ⎢ ⎥, A=⎢ ⎥ ering the numerical values of the robot characteristics from Table 1.
⎣ x3δ ⎦ ⎣ a31 a32 a33 a34 ⎦ The transfer function in Eq. (14) can be used to design a control
x4δ a41 a42 a43 a44 scheme for the single-wheel robot velocity. To validate this function,
⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ ⎡ ⎤ a numerical simulation with a constant input torque of 2N · mm is
b11 1 0 0 0 0 carried out. The computed results are compared with the nonlinear
⎢b ⎥ ⎢0 1 0 0⎥ ⎢0⎥ system response, and this comparison is presented in Fig. 6.
⎢ 21 ⎥ ⎢ ⎥ ⎢ ⎥
B=⎢ ⎥, u = τ, C=⎢ ⎥, D = ⎢ ⎥ As one can appreciate, the obtained response from the transfer
⎣ b31 ⎦ ⎣0 0 1 0⎦ ⎣0⎦
function is practically the same as one the obtained from nonlinear
b41 0 0 0 1 0 equations. These results validate the linearization process and
From the linearized system with Eqs. (10) and (11), the transfer justify the use of the proposed transfer function to synthesize the
function can be obtained as follows: velocity control by linear techniques.
Before designing a controller, it is convenient to analyze the pole
G(s) = C(sI − A)−1 B + D (12) and zeros in open and closed loop. Figure 7 shows the computed
distribution of pole and zeros in open loop. The corresponding
where open-loop system is stable due to both poles having negative real
⎡ ⎤ parts.
G1 (s) The closed-loop transfer function can be expressed as follows:
⎢ ⎥
⎢ ⎥
⎢ G2 (s) ⎥ C(s) G2 (s) −32.31s2 + 11772
⎢ ⎥ = = 3 (15)
G(s) = ⎢
⎢
⎥
⎥ (13) R(s) 1 + G2 (s)H(s) s − 32s2 + 95.51s + 11800
⎢ G3 (s) ⎥
⎢ ⎥ From the transfer function in Eq. (15), it is possible to obtain the
⎣ ⎦
location of pole and zeros in a closed loop as shown in Fig. 8. There
G4 (s) is a pair of conjugated poles in the right semi-plane, which means
rad
frequency have been assumed as ζ = 0.5 and ωn = 1 , respec-
s
tively. With these values,
Fig. 10 A comparison of the computed results for linear velocity of the single-wheel
pendulum robot with a constant input torque and with the proposed controller
Fig. 12 A MATLAB block diagram for the cosimulation of SWROB in control design
state as well as the settling time. The experiments were carried out related to disturbances and noise in the gyroscope that is used to
with a constant input torque of 2N · mm and the SWROB running measure the angular position of the robot. Moreover, angular velo-
on a flat horizontal surface as shown in video snapshots of city of the SWROB is obtained by numerical differentiation of the
Fig. 17. However, oscillations with a large amplitude are observed angular position measured by the gyroscope located on the rotation
in the experimental measurements. These oscillations are mainly axis of the robot. This operation could introduce numerical noise to
the velocity signal. This oscillatory behavior can be observed also in implementation of the proposed controller can be planned to verify
Fig. 18, where experimental results for a lower angular velocity are the closed-loop performance.
presented.
In Fig. 19, a comparison between two experimental responses
with different commanded velocities is presented. In this figure, Conflict of Interest
one can observe that both experiments exhibit a similar dynamic There are no conflicts of interest.
behavior (settling time, oscillations about reference). These
similarities are derived from the control tuning, which is the same
for both tests.
Data Availability Statement
The datasets generated and supporting the findings of this article
are obtainable from the corresponding author upon reasonable
4 Conclusions request. The authors attest that all data for this study are included
This study presents extended results about control, cosimulation, in the paper.
and testing of a SWROB with inertial locomotion actuation. The use
of a virtual prototype in ADAMS VIEW software demonstrates accurate
results when compared with analytical models that are obtained by References
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adjusting parameters values in the design model. Cosimulation ASME Press, New York.
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first prototype was constructed, and preliminary experimental [5] Navabi, H., Sadeghnejad, S., Ramezani, S., and Baltes, J., 2017, “Position Control
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