Abstract:The path following problem of a spherical rolling robot is studied, and a path following controller based on an adaptive sliding mode control scheme is designed. The designed path following controller adopts a robust sliding mode adaptive gain control law, and it can efficiently realize path following control of the real-life spherical rolling robot with perturbations and uncertainties. The motion equations of the spherical rolling robot subject to pure rolling and non-spinning constraints of the spherical shell are derived, based on which the adaptive sliding mode path following controller is developed. With respect to a specified reference geometry path, the designed path following controller can guarantee that the path following error converges to a small zero region within a finite time. The stability of the closed-loop control system is proven based on Lyapunov stability theory, and the results of numerical simulation and prototype experiment further verify the efficacy of the designed path following controller.