Many types of ball bots have some sort of mini robot rolling around it's interior. Others have rotary motors connecting the ball to an inner unit, which has a weight. Not this robot!

Instead, there are several linear actuators which connect an inner brains+battery component to the outer ball, not unlike the arrangement of a "parallel manipulator".

By pushing or pulling with these actuators, the inner unit can move itself to any location inside the ball.

If the ball is relatively lightweight, and the inner unit relatively heavy, we can deliberately unbalance the robot so it rolls in a particular direction.

Rolling isn't very exciting, but consider that the inner unit can also move itself up and down, causing the ball to bounce. If the bot is sturdy enough, it might be able to bounce over obstacles that it cannot roll over.
-- goldbb, Mar 27 2017

Like this? Spherical_20Battlebot
Uses linear actuators to move [Vernon, Mar 28 2017]

All sorts http://vcrossley.com/survey.pdf
A broad analysis of various types of spherical robots. [neutrinos_shadow, Mar 28 2017]

We've been here (more-or-less) before, but see linky for a good read on spherical robots.
-- neutrinos_shadow, Mar 28 2017


This is an Ehampster rolling around in an erector set sphere. Nifty!
-- beanangel, Apr 01 2017



random, halfbakery