DOIONLINE 
DOIONLINE Publish In |
International Journal of Mechanical and Production Engineering (IJMPE)-IJMPE |
 Journal Home Volume Issue |
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Issue |
Volume-1,Issue-6 ( Dec, 2013 ) | |||||||||
Paper Title |
Kugel Balance: Ballbots - The Future of Personal Transport? | |||||||||
Author Name |
Vijay Ramnath, Swarnim Raizada, Varun Adappa Marakada, Vaibhav Paraashar | |||||||||
Affilition |
Department of Mechanical Engineering, M.S. Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, Karnataka, India | |||||||||
Pages |
05-07 | |||||||||
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. | |||||||||
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