Development of Compact Self-Balancing Robot with Self-Standing and Stair-Climbing Capability

Abstract

Self-balancing robots can turn on the spot using differential steering with better efficiency than tracked or four-wheel drive robots, and they can be many times their width in height. However they have two major limitations: they cannot stand-up on their own and cannot climb stairs. In this paper, a novel design is proposed to address these issues. A single degree of freedom is added to the center of a four-wheel drive robot. This arm allows the robot to climb stairs and stand-up on its own. A model and simulation of the balancing and the stair-climbing process are derived and the stair-climbing is compared against experimental results with a prototype. It was shown that the model closely follows the trend of the experimental results and provides a basis for future studies on the concept.