SPHERICO

While spherical robots are an interesting design that has been studied before, but due to their relative manufacturing complexity there are few such devices commercially available. Given the increased popularity of 3D printers and laser cutters, rapid prototyping has become an integral part of engineering practice. Leveraging these advances, we have developed Spherico. Spherico is an inexpensive spherical robot that utilizes both laser cutter and 3D printing technology combined with off-the-shelve (OTS) components. Driven by a Raspberry Pi, the ROS (Robotic Operating System) is used as the underlying software architecture for controlling the robot. Using all the off-the-shelve OTS components, rapid prototyping parts and ROS, Spherico takes less than 72Hrs to build. The resulting robot is an inexpensive and robust platform for research into spherical robot control.

Spherico Internal Video

Video from inside the robot. 360 ° video showing outside of the robot while running on a flat ground.