Unmanned vehicles are popular for autonomous operation, especially in hazardous environments. Unfortunately, robot deployment in such environments can be challenging. Vehicles can be difficult to deploy and upon mission completion may require decontamination. A key issue in terms of remediation is that penetration of the vehicle body itself by the drive mechanism and sensors provides potential risks for environmental contaminants to enter into the vehicle. Sealing shafts, sensors and the like from external environment contamination can be difficult for many “off the shelf” autonomous robots. One vehicle design that avoids many of the issues associated with environmental contamination is the spherical robot design, such as the DragonBall. Spherical robots provide a number of advantages over their wheeled counterparts, but they also present a number of challenges and complexities. Chief among these are issues related to locomotive strategies and sensor placement and processing given the rolling nature of the device. Research on DragonBall helps to validate and test applications of spherical robots in hazardous environments. Some challenges include: placement of the sensor of the DragonBall, designing a control system, and construction.

Paper: The paper was published in RoManSy 2020, Japan, Tokyo: Robot Design, Dynamics and Control pp 305-312. View the paper here.