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Robert O. Ambrose

4 accepted papers

2025

Design of Soft Outer Shells for Control of Large Spherical Robots

RA-L 2025

While soft-shelled spherical robots offer promising mobility and robustness for planetary exploration, large-scale, mission-capable robots present several design challenges. This paper presents the design, manufacturing, and performance evaluation of multiple soft outer shell iterations for RoboBall

Cited by 0Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Empirical Contact Models for Soft Spherical Robots in Drake

RA-L 2025

Accurate dynamic modeling of soft-shelled spherical robots is challenging due to coupled rigid–soft body interactions and pressure-dependent contact behavior. This letter presents a modeling strategy for an empirically tuned pendulum-driven inflatable spherical robot. The approach combines a rigid-b

Cited by 1Source ↗Scholar ↗
2025

Empirically Compensated Setpoint Tracking for Spherical Robots With Pressurized Soft-Shells

RA-L 2025

Replacing spherical robots' hard shells with soft, pressurized tires has the potential to improve their off-road practicality immensely. This change leverages spherical robots as a simple and rugged solution to problems currently addressed using wheeled or tracked vehicles. Though numerous prototype

Cited by 2Source ↗Scholar ↗
2024

RoboBall: An All-Terrain Spherical Robot with a Pressurized Shell

ICRA 2024poster

Spherical robots are a different type of mobility platform. A spherical robot is self-contained within its shell rather than relying on a chassis with wheels to navigate. In this shell, it is completely shielded from dust and the environment. This benefit of geometric simplicity has led to the spher…

Cited by 4Source ↗Scholar ↗