The Wheelbot: A Jumping Reaction Wheel Unicycle
Andreas Rene Geist, Jonathan Fiene, Naomi Tashiro, Zheng Jia, Sebastian Trimpe
Abstract
Combining off-the-shelf components with 3D- printing, the Wheelbot is a symmetric reaction wheel unicycle that can jump onto its wheels from any initial position. With non-holonomic and under-actuated dynamics, as well as two coupled unstable degrees of freedom, the Wheelbot provides a challenging platform for nonlinear and data-driven control research. This letter presents the Wheelbot's mechanical and electrical design, its estimation and control algorithms, as well as experiments <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$^\star$</tex-math></inline-formula> demonstrating both self-erection and disturbance rejection while balancing.
BibTeX
@inproceedings{ral2022_thewheelbotajump,
title = {The Wheelbot: A Jumping Reaction Wheel Unicycle},
author = {Andreas Rene Geist and Jonathan Fiene and Naomi Tashiro and Zheng Jia and Sebastian Trimpe},
booktitle = {RA-L 2022},
year = {2022}
}