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Design and characteristic evaluation of a novel amphibious spherical robot

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Abstract

This paper presents a new type of amphibious spherical robots. The robot includes four drive units. Each drive unit consists of two servo motors, a water-jet propeller, a DC motor and a wheel. The robot can constitute three movement structure ways according to the environment. When the robot enters water, it adopts water jet propulsion. According to different land conditions, there are two movement patterns to switch. One is a quadruped movement pattern which is available to climb over obstacles; the other is a driving wheel movement pattern which is used to speed up the movement of robot under the flat terrain. Characteristic evaluation experiments on land for a novel amphibious spherical robot were conducted. Underwater motions of the robot mainly rely on the four water-jet propellers, it is necessary to measure relationship between actuating force of the water-jet propeller and the duty ratio. Gambit software is employed to establish and mesh the water-jet propulsion model. Simulation analysis of the models is implemented by FLUENT software. Localization control of the robot and wireless control of the robot were conducted. Finally, experiment results indicated that the developed novel amphibious spherical robot is feasible to develop marine resources and implement marine missions.

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Acknowledgments

This research is partly supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (61375094), Key Research Program of the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (13JCZDJC26200), and National High Tech. Research and Development Program of China (2015AA043202).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Tianjin Key Laboratory for Control Theory and Application in Complicated Systems and Biomedical Robot Laboratory, Tianjin University of Technology, Tianjin, China

    Jian Guo, Shuxiang Guo & Liguo Li

  2. Intelligent Mechanical Systems Engineering Department, Kagawa University, Takamatsu, Japan

    Shuxiang Guo

Authors
  1. Jian Guo
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  2. Shuxiang Guo
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  3. Liguo Li
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Correspondence to Jian Guo or Shuxiang Guo.

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Guo, J., Guo, S. & Li, L. Design and characteristic evaluation of a novel amphibious spherical robot. Microsyst Technol 23, 1999–2012 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-2961-9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00542-016-2961-9

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