Ballbot - ROBORAMA.info

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Building two-wheeled balancing robots has become very popular the last few of years. A CMU press release reveals a new balancing robot that may render all those two-wheeled bots obsolete. Ballbot balances on a single round ball, much like an upside down trackball. The tall, 95 pound robot balances dynamically while moving omnidirectionally on most surfaces, including carpet. Ballbot was built by Ralph Hollis and funded by the National Science Foundation.

"
Our research goal is to gain a deeper understanding of how such dynamic agility can be achieved in mobile machines interacting with people and operating in normal home and workplace environments. We are developing novel dynamically-stable rolling machine and walking machine research platforms to study this issue. We will evaluate the efficacy of this type of dynamic locomotion in the context of human environments.

Significant insights will be gained from this research toward producing agile motive platforms which in the future could be combined with the research community's ongoing work in perception, navigation, and cognition, to yield truly capable intelligent mobile robots for use in physical contact with people. Such robots could provide many useful services, especially for the elderly or physically challenged, in their everyday work and home environments. Many other uses such as entry into hostile environments, rescue in buildings, and surveillance to safeguard people or property can be envisioned.
"

http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/

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Tags:

• ballbot
• robotics
• robot
• balance

[AdamBailey9]

Probably left over from the development and testing phase, to stop it from falling over and damaging itself.

[hobguy7996]

the pulley at 1:45, i make those for a living

[yusufer5000]

reminds me a little bit of GizmoDuck from Darkwing Duck.

[crazydang42]

It orients itself by shifting its center of gravity. It's top heavy, with the batteries and computers in the top, and the ball on the bottom acts as a wheel to move the bottom of the robot to just below the top of the robot, keeping it in perfect balance.

[crazydang42]

Well, you sure are cynical. If you would bother to watch some of the other videos of the robot, you would find that it is for stabilizing and calibrating the sensors regarding the orientation and center of gravity of the robot while its balancing program is gearing up. The robot is purely experimental, and if you think everything experimental is useless, you have a dark view of the world, my friend.

[michaelk56001]

Why does this useless contraption have an eye bolt mounted on the top of it? Could it be that the thing is suspended by a thin wire from the ceiling or some other anchoring point?

[kmaijala2]

Nice balancing job. The last paragraph of the textual description seems too far fetched. Speaking of "intelligent mobile robot" or cognition is clearly out of scope for the project shown here. But maybe the text has some value in applying for funding:)

[wrnqzx]

I don't think it uses a gyroscope, at least I hope it doesn't. That would be less interesting, and make it more rigid and less flexible. It's better to just balance the way humans do - by shifting it's point of contact with the ground relative to its center of mass and its movement. It needs a "balance sensor" - something to determine which way it's tilting, and a good balancing algorithm, but I don't really see why it should be too difficult, at least not in theory.

[britoca]

amazing

[bixlerscott]

In the animated movie, "Robots", this is how Ratchets guardbots in his CEO office are built; on a single small ball to balance and move about on. Probably uses gyroscopes to balance itself similiar to how a Segway stays uprighted with a human on it.