Incredible Robot Balances Perfectly on a Ball

We’ve featured some basic segway-like self balancing robots with two wheels but we haven’t seen anything like this. This unique robot uses three omni-wheels to maintain its balance on a spherical ball. As demonstrated in the video below, it can be programmed to be guided by a human or simply maintain it’s balance. It’s a superb design which looks fantastic!

This gem comes from the same man who has built climbing and jumping robots. To balance, it uses two sets of accelerometers and gyroscopes as well as a 16-bit microcontroller. The combination of these sensors allows for precise and rapid corrections when the robot is moved.

Carnegie Mellon BallBot:

Similarly, Carnegie Mellon created a robot which also balances on a ball. Although their ‘BallBot’ doesn’t use omni-wheels, it’s tall enough to interact with people and has a few fail-safe mechanisms. Check out the video above and some related projects: