Kodai Suzuki, Mikhail Svinin, and Shigeyuki Hosoe,

Abstract:
The basic motivation of this paper is to study locomotion on a hemisphere. To understand the problem we resort to a simplified quasi-static model in which the locomotion object is represented by a mass point. In this formulation, the driving principle is based on controlling the position of the center of mass of the object, exploiting non-holonomic rolling constraint to propel the hemisphere. The principle is tested under simulation using two motion planning algorithms. The simulation results show the possibility of steering the loocmotion system to the desired configurations by moving the center of mass through multiple generalized figure eights on the main hemisphere plane.

Keywords: nonholonomic constraints, locomotion, rolling, motion planning