Slashdot Mirror
Robot Balances on a Single Spherical Wheel
dalangalma writes "Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Robotics Institute have developed a new kind of robot called the Ballbot that balances on a steel ball. Using a mechanism similar to a ball mouse, the Ballbot uses rollers to drive its single, spherical wheel and balance in place or glide around the room. The promise of such dynamically stable robots is that they can be much taller without having to have a wide base, making them much more suitable for working with humans. They are also much more agile, since they can be pushed out of the way easily without falling over. You can read the press release or check out the project's web page when it recovers from traffic."
"single spherical wheel" = a ball
I want my Tachikoma!
Raging in an online forum won't do anything for the world around you. To see change, you must take action.
re:"The promise of such dynamically stable robots is that they can be much taller without having to have a wide base, making them much more suitable for working with humans. "
Until said humans goes down a flight of stairs.
*Oof*
*Bounce*
*Expensive crashey noises*
At this rate we'll have-em screaming "exterminate" in no time.
(and yes I know post 2005 Daleks can do everything and go everywhere - I'm talking pre-video-game dalek)
Just don't make it drive into the wind!
Cool! I'd love to see if they can adapt this to a Segway-like transporter!
im surprised this hasnt come around sooner, i mean segway demonstrated it with their scooter...sort of
It's been a loooong time since I watched the show, but didn't the Jetson's have a robot like this?
...a beak and a visor, and really shiney metal?
Windows has detected an undetectable error.
Weebles wobble, but they don't take over humanity.
Other jokes could involve roll-on deodorant, or those kid's inflatable boxing dummies that flip back up when you hit them.
Neat design, really. I think a lot of people's first urge would be to try and push the robot over though, which like the old Weebles, may produce that same herky-jerky roll back to stability. I wonder how much gunk would build up in the mouse-wheel of those things though - be hard to turn it over to clean with that production model. Have to have some kind of door in it to clean without taking it out.
Ryan Fenton
Shrink this down and fill it with ink. An automatic pen! Well, it sounds good on paper...
Looks good for your age..
Help. I am a robot and I have fallen and I can't get up.
Um, ok, so what? Is there a lack of robotic performers at the circus?
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
will it be compatible with my ipod?
also, when will my college get one i can play with?
welcome our big balled overlords
You know, I've always hated that whenever I try to push a robot out of the way, I fall over.
This feature will be a boon to senior citizens especially.
I got my Linux laptop at System76.
The promise of such dynamically stable robots is that they can be much taller without having to have a wide base, making them much more suitable for working with humans
Huh? How does thinner = autmatically "much more suitable"? I just don't get it. We're used to working with people, and that extends to their personal space, which is substantially larger than the person. Who says that human/robot 'synergy' has anything to do with how fat the robot is?
Nevermind that all that active movement to keep standing upright means lots of battery drain, and irritating/distracting movement to said humans. We find coworkers that tap pens on their desks annoying, but they think this will 'fly'?
Oh, when the battery runs out of juice, or a motor (or its controller) goes dead- hilarity ensues...
Please help metamoderate.
I vaguely recall there being an alien race in Piers Anthony's Cluster series that balanced and moved on a single large ball. Anyone remember the name of the race? It'd be wonderfully nerdy if the CMU folks renamed their robot after these aliens. I also vaguely recall these aliens having sex by going around and around in a circle rolling continuously over a trail of slime. Maybe the CMU robots can do that too...
"I'm not sure this floor is entirely stable."
Rosie was perched atop a single roller skate, from what I can tell and remember.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/aa/JetUsing a mechanism similar to a ball mouse
Pfft... Let me know when they've developed a mechanism similar to a laser mouse.
FTA:
"When Ballbot is not in operation, it stands in place on three retractable legs."
So 'nervous balance' motions won't be necessary, one could assume.
As for the thinness issue: it is precisely the personal space issue that makes a thin robot useful in a crowded public space. Our perception of personal space factors in the personal space of the other person. So a robot that is as wide as one's 'personal space bubble' causes people interacting with it to give it even more room. The thin chassis on this robot alleviates that problem by only taking up an amount of space roughly equivalent to the human torso, so that a person's "personal space guess" comes out accurately.
Take care,
Mark
There is a solution...
They already did this in Robots
Maybe I'm not the average Slashdotter, but I have had sex with lots of women (many of whom seemed liked aliens) and can't remember most of their names.
Letter To Iran
Did they leave a slime trail too?
Latewire
"Technological Thret" is an 1988 animated short directed by Bill Kroyer. It centers around the introduction of an office robot that rolls around on a single ball in the bottom of its structure. One of the interesting little details about the short was that the robots were first animated in a computer, then rotoscoped in 2D to fit with the rest of the 2D short. The bot in the short didn't look *that much* like the Ballbot, but just enough to bring it to mind.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Only the ones without legs
Letter To Iran
Clip your fingernails, man!
/ CMU_BallbotOffice.jpg
http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/images
A dupe within the summary. Two of the links point the exact same press release. Anyway, I'd like to see a humanoid robot balance on a ball while trying to fix a problem with windows. Some people cannot do either.
Funny createSig(Witty remark, Odd reference)
{
return (Funny)remark + (Funny)reference;
}
There are some videos available on youtube, in case you want to spare them some bandwidth.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
first wad of gum that thing rolls over might bring it to a stop, or make it list to port or something ->
roll THUNK roll THUNK. And stairs? Or going outside?
I like old school, traditional sci fi robots, humanoid looking, bipedal walking type. If they need to get fancy, drop in the jackie chan mod chip or something.
from the Terrible Secret of Space.
"You can read the press release or check out the project's web page when it recovers from traffic."
//before// it was posted to Slashdot?
Wait, so you mean it was slashdotted
Slashdot must be sliding into irrelevance...
That's right: SLASHDOT IS DYING...
This thing should star in a 1960s Japanese movie.
*speaking into wrist communicator* Ballbot! TRANSFORM!
That's a nice system. There are some annoying limitations, though. It's tough to change the orientation of the robot, although you can handle that if you have a rotational joint further up so you can rotate the torso. Small diameter balls have the same problems as small diameter wheels - it's easy to get stuck in small depressions. That's why the Segway has such big wheels. And driving a sphere is always a tough problem mechanically. Most of the solutions have trouble with dirt accumulating on the drive wheels, which is why optical mice have replaced ball mice. It's possible to build a spherical electric motor, and that might be the way to go if this concept turns out to be useful.
It's good to see all this activity in self-balancing systems again, having worked on this around 1994-1995, and seen others working on it in the 1980s. Today, you can buy so much of what you need off the shelf, like good INS units. We used to waste too much time building custom stuff.
What happens when the robot tilts forward and so needs to move forward to correct its balance, but runs into something before it has moved far enough to correct itself? Does it simply fall over?
for the lazy:
b allbot_push.mpgn sh3305short.mpg
response to a disturbance: http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/video/
point-to-point motion: http://www.msl.ri.cmu.edu/projects/ballbot/video/
HD Trailers
I'm curious to how far can it fall but still be able to not recover itself. Look at the robot, it seems to be built where it can't be tilted too much, but having one of those bust up that Michael Jackson move (where he tils and awesome touches the floor and comes back up) would be neat! Or it could be like one of this bobbing clowns where you can punch it down, but it'll always stand back up.
HD Trailers
How about making a Segway type vehicle with a single ball. This would be awesome for cornering, as it could bank like the Carver 3 wheeler http://www.carver-europe.com/
I almost fell off a Segway during my first few hours of riding during some high speed cornering.
Organization: alphabetical, sometimes numerical or messy
They could make it really robust and easier to develop had they used a fuzzy logic controller. But that would be a little too imaginative for American engineers. The Japanese have been doing stuff like this for more than 20 years. Some old American guy rolls a bowling ball across the floor, calls it a "Ballbot", and everyone jumps up and shouts.
With the advent of robots that are immune to pushing, the eternal question becomes more relevant than ever: do you have stairs in your house?
In the videos they have threaded a big innertube over the structure, presumably to cushion the fall every time it tipped over.
Since the purpose of this structure is to interact with humans, They should just install big inflatable boobs and ass instead.
"Fix it"
The balls would have much higher centers of gravity (making the balance extremely easy) and fine tune the machinery required to remain balanced. From there, they could work their way into smaller and smaller balls, tweaking their materials (hardware & software) to a point of where it could handle pretty small pieces.
Starting large and migrating to smaller balls would mean you have fewer variables to deal with at the beginning and make the process simple[1] along the way.
_______________________________
[1] "Make things simple, not simpler." -Erasmus
Then there is Rosie http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/experiments/rosie/ . Does this mean he can't patent the idea due to prior art?
Stability is an issue, as some people have commented here. I myself can't imagine how you can realistically balance what is essentially a pencil on its sharpened point for any length of time, especially with batteries draining away. The robot must look like some sort of drunk date, listing to and fro with some rather large amplitude.
If it isn't in there already, how about some sort of flywheel/gyro (axis of rotation vertical, along robot chassis) built into the robot, at a height in the chassis that globally minimizes the effective lever distance any lateral force it may receive along its height? All that inertia would do a lot towards keeping the thing upright, just like a top. With good bearings you would drain very little, and it could even be used as a method to rotate the whole robot quite quickly, albeit in one direction unless you have some sort of intermediating transmission, by having a variable clutch to transfer some of the angular force from the flywheel to the chassis.
Hey, you could even make the flywheel out of materials so it also works like one of those static energy storage devices. Here is a somewhat decent link to a patent for one, but it's been covered on our beloved Slashdot before here, here, and here. This would give you a combination source of both electrical and direct mechanical energy for the robot to do with as it would. Theoretically, it could even be the primary power source, eliminating the need for heavy and expensive batteries, but the flywheel would have to spin really fast to store enough energy, and wouldn't have a way to spin back up during quiescent moments.
By the way, the robot building (and fighting!) community explored and exploited such dynamics thoroughly, spinners anyone?
They call that a push? More like a tap.... Let me give it a push and that thing will be on the ground. :P
One of these maybe?
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
Blithering Blatherskite!
or else!
This is the first time I've posted to Slashdot in nearly 5 years.
That robot in the videos is truly amazing - graceful, simple, and harmonious.
This is what we need - systems that co-operate with humans, can be pushed around, and stick to their own personal space.
We need more beauty and grace in the world, not less.
I work in technology, but I also study feng shui, and that robot has it in abundance.
In that for the wheel, it would need to know that it would have to shift its own weight to make a turn (as well as shift its weight again to go straight) as opposed to just moving a few different rollers.
It's like learning how to ride a bike; we're just watching others ride bikes that don't exist. <grin>
I seem to recall this from several years ago. If so, then the balancing would be even tougher, as the bouncing motion would need to find convenient points of opposition on the floor, and plan the bounces to try to hit them.
thanks for making the /. cliche pay
ANSWER: ITEMS PUSHED - GRANDMOTHER
TARGET - STAIRS
IT WAS THAT I DID
PAK CHOOIE
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
a b c d e f g h i j k l m
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
Yes Marvin the depressingly sad robot with the big single spherical head. You must name him Marvin, you hear me. You must. Do you know whats depression? I'm sure you can tell me the dictionary definition but have you ever felt it,experienced it? I have. It gnaws at you with everything its got till you feel raw inside. It lashes deep within you till you experience the same pain and wanton lust. It can drive a person crazy. It can drive a person insane. It can be at once the most wonderful feeling and the most terrible. Wonderful cause you know what you want for a change, and terrible because you are afraid of what might happen if you dont satiate the feeling. Not that it matters anyway, Cause we are all going to die soon. (3am here,too much coffee)
All this robot talk is making my dual spherical wheels itchy.
A real life 'Bigweld'
"I bow to no man" - Riddick
Or you could use a gyro to turn.
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Automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.
Seems to me there are two energy disadvantages. One, a regular wheel can have bearings and coast quite well. A single ball -- don't see how. Seems to me that you want the weight to be supported as close to top dead center as possible, because as the support points move towards the edge, you have more stress of the weight trying to slide down and outwards, which means more friction against the ball. Imagine worst case, where the weight is supported at .0001 degrees above the horizontal point ... it would take a tremendous force to keep it from sliding that last fraction of a degree and falling off. Maybe you could have the weight supported at the top with a separate load bearing, but how could one bearing adjust to movement in both directions? Anyway, all that extra friction means that much more power required to just move. I wonder how far it can coast?
Second, a legged robot, even just two legs, needs no energy to stay upright when not moving, unless it's windy. Considering the current state of battery tech, this seems impractical. I wonder how much extra energy it takes to stay upright when motionless.
Infuriate left and right
Don't they teach elementary physics anymore?
"If you push something hard enough, it will fall over!" - Fudd's First Law of Opposition.
Brought to you by the Department of Redundancy Department.
What did I do with that boxcar of industrial coke?
Knowing the folks at the robotics institute it'll be about 2 years before we see the army testing out a prototype robot that balances on a ball .... and then uses the ball to crush infantry while launching missiles.
CMU has a lot of great projects like that. Gladiator, Crusher... I know that most individual robot builders mean well, and I have friends who are anti-war at the RI, but seriously, look at who is actually demanding this technology and where it's being used. It's not being used to house the poor.
-bugg
Here is a paper about it.
...can stand on its own ball. Ouch.
mcgrew's razor: Never attribute to stupidity that which can be explained by greedy self-interest
If you really strive for it, even ones with legs.
we'll make it optical, that'll solve the problem!
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
..t'would be to the left of the forrard motion of travel, matey!
I just thought the image was amusing in me mind, a wad of gum, zillion buck rolling robot..buncha guys in white coats standing around scratching their heads..heh heh heh. I think that's why we as society thought it might be a good idea to have BOTH scientists and engineers.
I remember seeing a DSP demo in probably 1992 where two upright sticks were joined in the middle by a pair of hinges, one allowing the "z axis" stick to bend in half in the xz plane, the other to bend in half along the yz plane. The DSP got feedback from a mercury switch in each of the x and y directions, indicating whether the top stick was balanced in that direction, and opening/closing the respective hinge to compensate for being off-balance.
That stick just stood up straight on its end, wobbling ever so slightly. Slap it and it would bend like a knee, until it stood up again. Simple, effective, and it looks magic.
I've been waiting to see some kind of home robot that does that effect. Now this robot does it with a ball. I'd prefer to see the much cooler stick hopping around my house. It might have an easier time getting across the debris that clutters my floor. I know I do.
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make install -not war
I wouldn't want to live inside a giant robot. Why would the poor feel any differently?
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I have no idea how segway plans to defend their ip about balancing on two wheels, i.e. if they have any. People have been doing two wheel balancing robots for a long time. I remember seeing a few two wheeled robots in a micromouse maze solving robot competition in the 90's. They were the fastest speed run robots around. Granted it wasn't designed to balance a human but the principle is the same. The benefit of these robots is obviously the turning radius and the speed of the turns themselves. Ball robots aren't that big a stretch but the problem has always been how to deal with gunk getting stuck to the robot, when the robot only has one wheel. On two wheel robots you can always readjust wheel spin rates to compensate for a damaged wheel.
Clowns have been doing this for years.. -DaMouse
You could probably jump onto this robot without it falling over. I have never managed to shove it until it falls.
Second, Dreamhost is at the point that every small operation comes to where they discover that the business plan that worked fine when they had 10,000 customers doesn't scale up to 100,000 customers. Some companies can adapt to success, but Dreamhost ain't one of them. Slow servers, too much down time, no emergency plan. I'm bailing as soon as my current contract expires.
Third, the GNAA gag was never funny, and is now definitely old.
i wonder how long till there is a BallBot league in robocup!
l e_tribots.wmv
the middle size league in the robocup competition has THE most complex robots there are. this is where the latest advances in robots combine.
here is a video of the top two teams from the Bremen round this year.
http://www.shadow-dragon.info/upload/robocub_fina
i know that not many will get to see this post since i'm posting two days after the ballbot story was posted... but the video is very revealing as to the current state of robotics.
i disable sigs
This looks like it could make a great mode of transport...
I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
is fine,if a little noisy.
Let's see that ball bearing robot go UP a flight of stairs.
And using the elevator/lift doesn't count.
. . . our only refuge from the impending robotic uprising was to tilt those vending machine sized robots onto their backs, and now some american scientists have decided to go and ruin that for us. I suppose we better lay down and just accept our new dynamically upright robotic overlords.
disclaimer: I've been known to store numbers in my ass for which to dig out when quantities are required.
Let Carnegie Mellon bring on its steel ball robot. MIT will counter it with their Wheel Chock Robot. Meanwhile, Penn State robotics department has in development the magnetic iron filings robot.
And Arizona State is working on the unlevel tile floor robot, which has two modes of attack--the missing tiles mode and the wide, deep grout lines mode.
TEST:
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make install -not war