Abstract
Recently, various types of spherical robots that can roll and move on the ground have been developed. We are now developing a spherical robot that can roll and, in addition, rotate around the vertical axis simultaneously. By using the added degree of freedom, the attitude of the robot can be changed arbitrarily even when the robot rolls along a specified path on the ground. This paper proposes an optimal trajectory planning method for the robot that moves along a straight line on the ground. The trajectory that connects an initial attitude and a final attitude is obtained by finding the optimal contact point trajectory on a spherical surface.
