Team Hexaball
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Hybrid motion of the Hexaball: Walking and Rolling
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| Walking | Rolling |
Hexaball starting to roll by displacing the center of mass by moving the legs
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Team Photo
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| Nick | “Napolean” | Curtis | “The Brain” | Dave |
Problem Statement
Robotic locomotion by rolling is more efficient in many ways, but the most obvious disadvantage of a rolling robot would be any sort of obstacle, such as a stair. In order to expand the range of a rolling robot, retractable legs which could step over such obstacles are necessary. The problem then becomes an issue of incorporating both systems – walking and rolling – into a single package which would offer the efficiency of rolling and the versatility of walking.
Hexaball 2005–2006 Project Summary
The Hexaball project, proposes to design, create, and build a spherical robot with six independently powered and controlled legs. This robot should be capable of mixed motion including both rolling motion when it is folded into a ball and walking and climbing motion when the robot is unfolded and the legs are extended. The primary emphasis of this project will be to take the work performed by the previous Hexaball team and continue and improve upon it with the goal of obtaining a completed prototype leg assembly for use in the robot, and possibly a completed robot capable of walking, folding into a ball and unfolding. This robot will be designed to operate based upon tethered controls with an external power supply, the task of integrating the controls and power supply will be left for future design projects due to time and budgetary constraints.
This project will be ground breaking from an academic and intellectual standpoint. While spherical robots relying on rolling as the primary means of locomotion already exist, most of these robots do not have the ability to walk. Many of these robots rely on a displaced mass such as a pendulum force to roll. Additionally, no robot exists currently that uses the same control system and power source to accomplish both the walking and rolling actions. This project will provide new knowledge in the area of spherical robots by examining methods to use displacement of the legs by oscillation to accomplish rolling motion. Additionally this project has many real world applications as rolling motion is fundamentally more efficient than walking this robot would be of use wherever a highly mobile robot, with tight power constraints is needed.