One of the biggest robot design challenges is making them move from
place to place. Lots of robots are designed to walk, run, or jump the same
way people and animals do. The Walking Robot Dog in Chapter 1 had
four legs like a real dog — but robots with two, six, or even more legs are
common. Other robots look like vehicles and drive around using wheels like
cars or treads like tanks. Flying robotic drones are also popular. But robots
can use all kinds of weird ways to travel.
Maybe you’ve seen ball-shaped robots like BB-8, the helpful droid that rolls
around the Star Wars universe. In real life, an educational company called
Sphero makes rolling robots about the size of a billiard ball. You can tell
them where to go just like an RC car, using your smartphone as a remote
control.
Then there are robots that combine the best part of legs and wheels, with
legs that spin around like wheels. They’re known as whegs (the name is a
registered trademark of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland),
and look like the spokes on a wagon wheel, without the rim. Whegs can
climb up stairs or step over bumpy terrain. On smooth ground, they can
simply roll along like regular wheels.
Other robots just shimmy and shake where
they want to go. Instead of legs swinging
back and forth or wheels spinning, they
use vibration motors to get from place to
place. If you’ve ever made a brush bot by
adding a tiny disk vibration motor to the
head of a toothbrush, or played around
with a Hexbug Nano toy robot, you know
those things can move fast. These are
examples of a programmable body
because, by pointing the brush bristle
“legs” one way or another, you can make
them head in a specific direction.
Sphero
Sphero, a robotic ball that can
be programmed to jump or roll
with a smartphone app, was the
pioneer of rolling robots.
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