Dr. Masaaki Kumagai, director of the Robot Development Engineering Laboratory at Tohoku Gakuin University, in Tagajo City, Japan, has built wheeled robots, crawling robots, quadruped robots, biped robots, and biped robots on roller skates.
Then one day a student approached him to suggest they build a robot that would balance on a ball.
Dr. Kumagai thought it was a wonderful idea.
The robot they built rides on a rubber-coated bowling ball, which is driven by three omnidirectional wheels. The robot can not only stand still but also move in any direction and pivot around its vertical axis.
It can work as a mobile tray to transport cocktails objects and it can also serve as an omnidirectional supporting platform to help people carry heavy objects.
Such a ball-balancing design is like an inverted pendulum, and thus naturally unstable, but it offers advantages: it has a small footprint and can move in any direction without changing its orientation.
In other words, whereas a two-wheel self-balancing robot has to turn before it can drive in a different direction, a ball-riding robot can promptly drive in any direction. Try that, Segway!
Dr. Kumagai and student Takaya Ochiai built three robots and tested them with 10-kilogram bricks. They even made them work together to carry a large wooden frame.
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