BUBBLE BOT

The Bubble Bot is a spherical robot, 18" in diameter. With any cellphone placed inside, the bot can be remotely driven from any touchtone phone.

Motion is achieved by the shifting of the bot's center of gravity. This results in forward and backward rolling motion at up to 3' per second. Moving the center of gravity to the left or right causes the sphere to lean and, while rolling, causes gradual turning.

Click on the images above to see quicktime movies of the 1st test drives. These runs were controlled by an RC radio and receiver. The Bubble Bot has since been retrofitted with a microprocessor and custom DTMF decoder allowing cellphone control through touch tones.

Currently, the phone keypad corresponds to relative motion. The 5 is stop, 2 is forward, 8 is reverse, as if the 9 buttons were arrow keys up, down, left, right. Future plans include testing with compass direction control, which may or may not be more intuitive for users. This will require the addition of either an electronic compass or gps receiver, and will allow the bot to do more decision making in path finding.

Other future developments include adding an onboard voice, automatic recharging or battery changing, night lighting, and shell or skin allowing travel over water.

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(last update 6/29/05)