Solid Modeling

Sunday, August 27th, 2006

Thanks to Bernard for sending us a link to Solid Modeling - Resource Primer for 3D Artists. Developed by Carnegie Mellon, it serves as a repository for Pro/ENGINEER Wildfire 3D models for those interested in designing and animating with LEGO Mindstorms NXT parts.

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Try THIS with the NXT ball!

Sunday, August 27th, 2006

It seems to be the latest craze in LEGO land for builders to come up with clever ways to incorporate the NXT ball with their robots. Anybody up to try this one?

Meet BallBot - a robot developed at Carnegie Mellon University capable of balancing on a single spherical wheel.

In a premlinary experiment paper entitled “One is Enough!“, BallBot’s researchers proclaim “multi-wheel statically-stable mobile robots for operation in human environments are an evolutionary dead end.” Bold statements, I’d say, probably directed at the well-publicized Segway. “Robots of this class tall enough to interact meaningfully with people,” CMU researchers say, “must have low centers of gravity, overly wide bases of support, and very low accelerations to avoid tipping over.” A single spherical wheel, however, will reduce a robot’s footprint and allow it to turn in any direction quickly.

Here are a few CMU videos of BallBot:
Response to Disturbance
Point-to-Point Motion

Press Release:
BallbotAugustFinal.pdf

BallBot is also featured in the September issue of Popular Science. It’s available now on news stands and online.

There you have it. The math is provided in the research papers. So I’d say pick up a few acceleration sensors from mindsensors.com or Vernier, and get to it!

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