Hasta La Gadget!

There have been robots that can balance themselves and even objects and people on top of them (think Segway and the Honda U3-X)–but the robot that can balance on top of a ball is a rarer species. Now there’s one that can do this and, adding a new wrinkle, rotate around its vertical axis.

Like a toy dog in a circus, BallIP (short for Ball Inverted Pendulum) can roll along atop a rubber-coated ball without falling over. It can even balance objects on top of itself while balancing on the ball–a trick even the circus dogs can’t duplicate.

According to a post on the IEEESpectrum blog, the robot is the brainchild of Dr. Masaaki Kumagai, director of the Robot Development Engineering Laboratory at Tohoku Gakuin University, in Tagajo City, Japan. He began building what’s known as “inverted pendulum” robots back in 2004 with the goal of creating a single ball-balancing bot. BalllP works to keep its inclination at zero degrees and to keep the rolling ball under it in the same spot.

What makes BalllP a standout is its ability to roll with the ball in virtually any direction. This is thanks to the three sets of omnidirectional rollers that drive the ball’s stability and direction from above. It can also manage to stay upright even if pushed.

[Image is from a video of a 2008 BalllP prototype]