The Wheelbot: A bike with jumping reaction wheels

Recent progress in development transmission deviceEmbedded sensors and controllers offer new possibilities for robot. A recent article on arXiv.org focuses on poorly driven, non-linearly coupled systems where the number of actuators is less than the number of degrees of freedom.

Wheelbot is a reactive wheel-controlled unicycle
The robot uses a brushless motor to erect itself after flipping. Image credit: arXiv: 2207.06988 [cs.RO]

The researchers propose Wheelbot, a small unicycle cycling robot with two drive wheels attached to a rigid body, with one wheel rolling on the ground and the other acting as a reaction wheel. Its signature feature is a symmetrical design with two wheels that can act as either a jet or a roller depending on the configuration.

The robot acts as a control test pad for tasks such as balancing, driving, rolling up or standing up. Wheelbot is the first unicycle cycling robot that can stand on its own from any starting position, recover from significant disturbances, and carry its own built-in power source.

Combining pre-existing components with 3D printing, the Wheelbot is a symmetrical reactive unicycle that can jump onto its wheels from any starting position. With non-three-dimensional and non-triggered dynamics, as well as two unstable degrees of freedom together, Wheelbot provides a challenging platform for data-driven and nonlinear control research. This paper presents the mechanical and electrical design of Wheelbot, its estimation and control algorithms, as well as experiments demonstrating both self-assembly and disturbance rejection during balancing.

Research articles: René Geist, A., Fiene, J., Tashiro, N., Jia, Z., and Trimpe, S., “The Wheelbot: A Jumping Reaction Wheel Unicycle”, 2022. Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2207.06988
Project location: https://sites.google.com/view/wheelbot

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