Design and Development of a Propulsion Induced Rolling Spherical Tensegrity Robot
Niansong Zhang, Rui Jiang, Xinfeng Shao, Yongliang Wu, Guiyan Qiang, Wenkai Huang, Yixiang Liu, Yibin Li
Abstract
Spherical tensegrity structure has good dynamic stability, support strength and flexibility, and is widely used in the field of mobile robot research. Most of the tensegrity spherical robots deform themselves to make gravity work to realize the motion, but the deformation of both rods and ropes affects the robot's motion efficiency and motion instability. In this paper, a new type of tensegrity spherical robot is proposed, which is powered by six fixed ducted thrusters, and the thrust is provided to induce the robot to roll when in different attitudes. This paper firstly introduces the structural design and principle of the robot. Secondly analyzes the magnitude of the propulsive force required for the robot's motion and establishes a kinematic model. Finally, the robot prototype model was built and the robot motion experiments were conducted in simulation and the real environment respectively. The experimental results show that the robot has a simple structure but high motion efficiency, and has a strong ability to adapt to the environment.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{iros2025_designanddevelop,
title = {Design and Development of a Propulsion Induced Rolling Spherical Tensegrity Robot},
author = {Niansong Zhang and Rui Jiang and Xinfeng Shao and Yongliang Wu and Guiyan Qiang and Wenkai Huang and Yixiang Liu and Yibin Li and Jie Zhao},
booktitle = {IROS 2025},
year = {2025}
}