Rosie the Robot
 

I thought people might find this interesting. A robot that uses a ball to move and balance instead of wheels. Is this similar to what I saw before on this website or is it different?
http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

Looks like the drive system for the cars in I, Robot movie but with the coolness factor of 3 less points of contact on the ground. :)

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

It reminds me of a mix from TechnoKats ball drive from 03' mixed with the Segway.

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

I had an idea of something like that, but it would be to ride on and I deemed it impracticle because there would be no good way to balance, get on or off, and a few other things. This seems like a much more practical use of the idea.

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

I read about this the other day and thought, "Keep this away from the Game Design Committee!" :)

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

I love the videos.

One thing I noticed is that they don't seem to have control over the orientation of the robot.

I think they'd need to replace the rollers that provide XY motion with omni-wheels and then add a 3rd powered axis (also driven by an omni wheel) to rotate the robot about its long axis.

Very cool idea.

Joe J.

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

I could see it now...

<R103> You may only use ONE spherical ball to control the propulsion and balancing of your robot. No other parts of your robot may touch the floor at any time during the game.

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

SHHHH dont give them any ideas!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

I just read about this in PopSCI and was wondering about any videos, Thanks for the link :D

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

There are videos attached at the bottom of the page.

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

The only thing is that it looks as if it can't stop swaying on demand w/o falling

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

Why stop? Swaying is awesome. :p;)

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

I'm betting that rather than a mechanical gyro, its probably an electronic gyro, and that the swaying is the oscillation around the set point.

Re: Rosie the Robot
 

It look very stable mostly because i still think that there is a massive gyroscope in the middle. Looks like it has a mechanical gyro not an electrical gyro. The reason its mechanical is because if the robot can oscillate around a given point then it has some force pulling it to its neutral position. If it was strictly an electrical gyro then the robot would have to move its ball to move into position under its center of gravity. Rosie probably has a mechanical gyro to keep it balanced and an electrical gyro to keep it in one spot and return it to that spot if its moved.