Modelling and Simulation Analysis of Rolling Motion of Spherical Robot

This paper presents the findings of modelling, control and analysis of the spherical rolling robot based on pendulum driven within the simulation environment. The spherical robot is modelled using Lagrange function based on the equation of rolling motion. PD-type Fuzzy logic controller (FLC) was designed to control the position of the spherical robot where 25 rules were constructed to control the rolling motion of spherical robot. It was then integrated with the model developed in Simulink-Matlab environment. The output scaling factor (output gain) of the FLC was heuristically tuned to improve the system performance. The simulation results show that the FLC managed to eliminate the overshoot response and demonstrated better performance with 29.67% increasing in settling time to reach 0.01% of steady state error.