New mobility… A’one-legged robot’ that is also comfortable sideways

The UCLA research team is conducting research on a mobile robot that moves while maintaining exquisite balance with an omni wheel that can move back and forth and left and right with a unicycle that moves using one large wheel. This robot, called OmBURo (formally known as Omnidirectional Balancing Unicycle Robot), moves little by little in all directions and balances it so that it does not fall.

The omburo stumbles, but it never falls and moves in a fixed direction. The hill road is no problem. Two servo motors are mounted on the Ombro. One is for a basic tire that turns in the longitudinal direction and the second is a small roller that turns in the lateral direction. All power is provided to the rollers, all of which are powered by a servomotor through four self-developed flexible helical gears. When the roller starts to move, it detects the difference in speed between the two servomotors.

Omburo started its development in that if the robot is used in a small space with humans, it can move in all directions even in mobility and require advanced steering functions. As there is no robot that meets all of these conditions so far, a robot using two-axis wheels was devised. Related information can be found here .