Japan is a robot-crazed nation with bots that do everything from sit in dentist chairs to playing sports and serving as surrogate girlfriends for geeky introverts.
Still, even for Japan, a robot that bowls seems at least a little bit over the edge. And yet welcome the Ball Inverted Pendulum (Ball P) to the fickle and dynamic world of automatons.
The director of Tohoku Gakuin University’s Robot Development Engineering Laboratory, Dr. Masaaki Kumagai, has created a 20-inch, 16.5-pound robot whose name comes from the bowling ball on top of which it is balanced.
Although balancing bots have been created before, this one is different. The BallP balances ON TOP OF a ball. What this means to the dynamic world of automatons isn’t exactly clear, but it does make the BallP different from others of its ilk.
BallP can actually carry equipment both by itself and also with a human accomplice, making it possibly marketable as a versatile metal butler/ fetcher/wheelbarrow of sorts. The bot is able to do this via a combination of motors, gyroscopes, micro-step controllers and accelerometers. Its three omni-directional wheels can make it stand still, spin in place, move in any direction and pivot on a vertical axis.
The BallP uses what are known as holonomic-type wheels on a bowling ball covered with rubber. These special wheels-within-wheels render an additional axis of motion which allows the robots that use them to rotate in place.
What will follow BallP is anyone’s guess.
Japan keeps topping itself with new and different bots that do new and different things.
http://www.weirdasianews.com/2010/05/16/ball-inverted-pendulum-bowling-robot/
Youtube Video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI06lujiD7E&feature=player_embedded
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