Paper Title :Kugel Balance: Ballbots - The Future of Personal Transport?

Author :Vijay Ramnath, Swarnim Raizada, Varun Adappa Marakada, Vaibhav Paraashar

Article Citation :Vijay Ramnath ,Swarnim Raizada ,Varun Adappa Marakada ,Vaibhav Paraashar , (2013 ) " Kugel Balance: Ballbots - The Future of Personal Transport? " , International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering (IJMPE) , pp. 05-07, Volume-1,Issue-6

Abstract : There has been a constant desire for easy travel to simplify life with numerous attempts made to achieve the same. Present day transport devices are restricted to motion in a single direction and various steering constraints. Kugel balance (ball balance) is a personal transporter which aims to solve this problem by using the concepts of omnidirectionality and self-balancing. It achieves the above two properties by utilizing a ball instead of conventional wheels for traversing in a plane. This paper is an exploratory step towards achieving this in a simple, functional and cost effective manner. Inspired from a class of robots called Ballbots, a single point of contact is achieved between ball and ground. A person riding the Kugel balance is capable of traversing in any direction at a given instant by gently leaning in the desired direction of travel while seated on the device. A lot of research has been carried out with respect to omnidirectionalsystems particularly in the field of mobile robotics for improved human-robot interaction. The structure, mechanism, initial observations and results from the Kugel Balance along with learning from a small scale prototype are described in this paper.

Type : Research paper

Published : Volume-1,Issue-6

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