The Hbot : A Holonomic Spherical Haptic Interface Driven by Non-Holonomic Wheels

TL;DR

The paper introduces the Hbot, a holonomic spherical haptic device driven by non-holonomic wheels, with a detailed kinematic and singularity analysis, and demonstrates its effective trajectory tracking and haptic rendering capabilities.

Contribution

It presents the design, kinematic analysis, and singularity avoidance of a novel holonomic spherical robot for haptic applications, including a working prototype.

Findings

Successful trajectory tracking demonstrated

Effective haptic rendering with various stiffness levels

Singularity analysis ensures workspace safety

Abstract

We present the Hbot, a holonomic, singularity-free spherical robot designed for haptic simulations. The Hbot is made up of a caged sphere actuated by steered and driven non-holonomic wheels to produce continuous and unlimited spherical motions. We analyse the kinematic interface between a sphere and $n$ arbitrarily positioned, steered and driven non-holonomic wheels in the general case. We also present a detailed singularity analysis and show that workspace-boundary and workspace-interior singularities can both be avoided at the design stage. We implement a prototype using two steered and driven non-holonomic wheels and show experimental results for trajectory tracking and rendering of various rotational stiffness levels.