#ballbot

January 1st, 2025 - rescension (and an annotated version)

"happy new YEear [sic] :D"

There was a drawing I wanted to make at the end of 2023 featuring all the OCs I'd come up with that year hanging around some indeterminate setting. That drawing unfortunately never came to light, but I decided to have a do-over with that idea come the end of 2024.

Arbeitskollegen aus Metall oder : die Roboter sind unter uns: Pausenlos perfekt gepackte Paletten, der Roboter kann es: Und da Weihnachten vor der Tür steht, mein spezieller Tip: Verschenken sie einen knuffigen kleinen Industrieroboter, den YOUBOT:…

How the What? BB-8 Under the Dome!

by Vagabond Carter

So by now we’ve all seen BB-8, R2-D2’s football (European style) cousin of a droid do the seemingly impossible by rolling out on stage live at Star Wars Celebration.

If you haven’t: What rock were you under today?!

This reveal put the absolute last nail in the theory that the little rolling droid was some form of CGI effect, in direct contradiction to Director J.J. Abrams…

The Ballbot shall:

Be self-balancing on a ball

Not harm users or its environment

Be light weight

Have a compact size

Communicate wirelessly

Have an easy to use controller

Be able to maneuver over multiple terrains

Be able to operate in multiple working modes

Be able to operate for extended periods of time

Hello Tumblr!

We are Design Team 07 for this semester's Senior Design Project at The University of Akron. Our project revolves around designing and creating a self-balancing ball robot. The most notable mode of land driven transportation requires a wheel of some sort. But what about using a ball? With a ball comes the distinct advantage of being omni-directional, meaning you’re able to traverse in any direction. However, using a ball requires a sophisticated control system aided by accurate sensors in order to keep the robot on top of the ball and stable at all times.

That is where the design for our balance ballbot comes in. It will use four DC driven motors in a square configuration with specialized wheels – omni-wheels – and an array of sensors that are used to measure the systems positional data to keep the system balanced. The robot will operate autonomously or via a user provided wireless control, all under the instruction of a microcontroller.

The mechanical design of the ballbot is finalized and the electrical hardware design is ready to be implemented. However, without the mechanical structure achieved, the software design remains preliminary until proper physical testing can be conducted.

Features

Balance on a rubber-coated ball

Balance autonomously or through a wireless controller

Omnidirectional

Able to traverse over various terrains and around obstacles

This blog's purpose is for our team to constantly be in the loop of who is working on what, what the status of these tasks are, any videos or articles that we feel will help with our project, etc. 

Do not hesitate to leave a question or comment in our ask box!

Let's get this ball balancing!

NASA's Ball Bot