The Cubli: a cube that can jump up, balance, and 'walk'
The Cubli is a 15 × 15 × 15 cm cube that can jump up and balance on its corner. Reaction wheels mounted on three faces of the cube rotate at high angular velocities and then brake suddenly, causing the Cubli to jump up. Once the Cubli has almost reached the corner stand up position, controlled motor torques are applied to make it balance on its corner. In addition to balancing, the motor torques can also be used to achieve a controlled fall such that the Cubli can be commanded to fall in any arbitrary direction. Combining these three abilities -- jumping up, balancing, and controlled falling -- the Cubli is able to 'walk'.
Lead Researchers: Gajamohan Mohanarajah and Raffaello D'Andrea
This work was done at the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland and was funded in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), grant number 146717.
For more details visit: www.idsc.ethz.ch/Research_DAnd...
Other links:
robohub.org/swiss-robots-cubli...
• Gajamohan Mohanarajah:... (Zurich.Minds talk on Cubli)
Now shrink it down to size of a couple of dice, give it a face and lets head over to Vegas.
Cubli in 2030: "I need your clothes, your boots and your motorcycle"
Now imagine if it was stylized to look like a companion cube from portal
This is honestly mesmerizing to watch. Something that is not meant to autonomously move moving autonomously.
Recommended to me in 2019.
They understood how to think inside the box
I'm more impressed by the precision than by the ability to balance.
I remember only a few years ago there were no bots that could stand and then move on just 2 feet like a human, because that kind of feedback loop-to motor action hadn't yet been perfected. This is very cool.
Someone give this cube to thanos.
looking forward to fighting this in the future.
As someone with limited mobility I can't help but think that maybe some day this technology might be used in an exoskeleton that would allow a person to walk again.
What an amazing technical achievement. Brilliant! Thank you for posting.
Imagine building a house in minecraft and one of the blocks just walks away
What's incredible to me is that they were not only able to balance it on a corner but balance it and counter the torque to keep it from spinning on its corner. Amazing.
It's cool until you find it on your nightstand walking towards while you sleep, after you previously took out the battery and packed it in a box in your basement.
That's pretty badass, can't wait to see a newer model in action now
Cavemen :
1975: "I bet we'll have flying cars in the future."
Nice application of centrifugal forces, gyroscopic stability, MEMS and computing to balance and move the cube.
A product of a peerless engineering mind! Congrats to the maestro at ETH