A Study of a Class of Vibration-Driven Robots: Modeling, Analysis, Control and Design of the Brushbot
This work addresses the design and control of low-cost, robust vibration-driven robots for applications like swarm robotics, but it is incremental as it builds on existing vibration-driven locomotion concepts.
The paper tackled the modeling, control, and design of brushbots, a class of vibration-driven robots, by deriving dynamic models, validating them experimentally on a fully-actuated platform, and implementing coordinated control on a swarm to demonstrate simplicity and robustness.
In this paper we present a study of a specific class of vibration-driven robots: the brushbots. In a bottom-up fashion, we start by deriving dynamic models of the brushes and we discuss the conditions under which these models can be employed to describe the motion of brushbots. Then, we present two designs of brushbots: a fully-actuated platform and a differential-drive-like one. The former is employed to experimentally validate both the developed theoretical models and the devised motion control algorithms. Finally, a coordinated-control algorithm is implemented on a swarm of differential-drive-like brushbots in order to demonstrate the design simplicity and robustness that can be achieved employing a vibration-based locomotion strategy.