Abstract
A conventional floor polishing mobile vehicle or robot that has a rotary brush should be fairly large in body size and heavy in weight to prevent unnecessary movement caused by friction between a rotating brush and a floor. When those robots having lager weight are used to sweep or polish a floor, accidental collisions may damage office fixtures in a room. From this point of view, a light weight polishing robot is preferable.
In this paper, we propose a new floor polishing robot moved with a new locomotion mechanism. Driving force for locomotion and steering of the robot is generated by a friction between a rotary brush and a floor with inclining the brush. This reaction force is calculated by the theoretical model in order to control the robot.
Experimental results show the robot rotation angle is controlled within an error of 1 degree using PID control rules.
