Do you remember the droidekas from Star Wars that rolled around all the way to their destination before being deployed to pummel the Jedis and all other opposition into submission with their relentless barrage of lasers? Well, that might be the realm of science fiction, but there are other robots in real life such as the RoSphere which will get up and about simply by rolling. Yes sir, this verb brings back fond memories of the Limp Bizkit song “Rollin’”, as the RoSphere would move from one place to another by rolling.
The whole idea of the RoSphere’s existence is to roll around in crop fields, taking down measurements of soil moisture thanks to the integrated detectors that are located on its surface. This concept hails from the Robotics and Cybernetics Research Group at the Madrid Polytechnic University, where their aim was to develop robots which would eventually be able to navigate around uneven terrain. The researchers behind the RoSphere claim that it is inherently stable, as it moves around using its inner machinery by shifting the center of the system’s weight.
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