This report tracks the design and development of an exploration robot
based on a Control Moment Gyroscope actuator. After many observations
and experimentations, a final structure of the sphere was adopted with an
internal hexagonal housing which contains all the electronics. One-degree-of-freedom
gimbal was mounted inside the housing which was
pin jointed on one side and has a gear system on the other which shifts
the rotation of gimbal along the central axis. The gear is coupled with a
servo motor to facilitate rotation control of the gear and as a result, angle
control of the gimbal. On the gimbal is mounted a BLDC motor, whose
shaft is coupled with a reaction wheel. Changes in angular momentum
are obtained by quickly changing the speed of the shaft of the motor. An
Inertial Measurement Unit is attached to the sides of the housing which
gives the roll, pitch, and yaw of the system. Data acquisition and conditioning
of these signals are done by an onboard Arduino Uno which
localizes the system and controls the motor accordingly based on these
values. A camera module - OV7670 is mounted inside the housing such
that its lens is peeking out to capture an image of the outside environment.
Using a method called Panoramic Scanning, the system yaws with the
camera constantly taking readings for each fixed angular yaw steps and
puts it together to form a full 360 picture. All these values and any instructions
to be followed are given and taken via Bluetooth using an HC05
module attached to the Arduino which would be paired and connected to
an external Remote PC which constantly monitors the system.