Energy Expenditure Forecasting at Path Generation of Spherical Robots within Multi-Agent System

Background: The present research is relevant due to gathering the experience associated with a practical use of a spherical robot as a chassis for placing the local environmental monitoring equipment and due to the revealed need to use such robots within groups. Therefore, the article is aimed at showing the connections between the parameters of the external environment and kinematic, power and energy characteristics of the spherical robot chassis. Method: The main approaches to the research of the present problem are the methods of the transportation vehicle motion theory which in their turn are based on theoretical mechanics and theoretical physics laws, etc. The methodologies enable to significantly simplify a non-holonomic task associated with a sphere motion and to reach kinetic, power and energy characteristics appropriate for a practical use. Findings: The authors have studied the questions related to the estimation of energy expenditure for the spherical robot motion in an arbitrary path, have offered the concept of energy expenditure chart and shown the principles of using such chart for generation of a path of a spherical robot which operates within a multi-agent system. The approach regarding the generation of energy expenditure chart based on the preliminary area survey using a spherical robot has also been studied in the present article. Improvements: The materials of this article are of a practical value when working on the development of the ground component of multi-component multi-agent systems regardless of the type of the agent chassis.