Meet Cubli – An engineering masterpiece (in a cube shape that is) that can jump up on its edges, balance on its angles and walk on its sides, all by itself!
The Cubli is a 15 × 15 × 15 cm cube that can jump up and balance on its own corners. Sounds straight out of sci-fi movies but its real.
Cubli CAD Drawing
How does it work? Well, here’s the engineer’s explanation.
Reaction wheels mounted on three faces of the cube rotate at high angular velocities and then brake suddenly, causing the Cubli to jump up. Once the Cubli has almost reached the corner stand up position, controlled motor torques are applied to make it balance on its corner. In addition to balancing, the motor torques can also be used to achieve a controlled fall such that the Cubli can be commanded to fall in any arbitrary direction. Combining these three abilities — jumping up, balancing, and controlled falling — the Cubli is able to ‘walk’.
Cubli is designed and developed by lead researchers: Gajamohan Mohanarajah and Raffaello D’Andrea of the Institute for Dynamic Systems and Control, ETH Zurich, Switzerland and was funded in part by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), grant number 146717.
Hi, Mani Karthik here. Having lived in USA, India & Middle East, and worked for big MNC’s to startups, I have a lot to share with you. My aim is to help people, by sharing everything I’ve learned in life, through this blog. It’s read today by more than 150K people world over! I currently live in LA, California and visit India occasionally. Here’s my full story on who I am and why I blog. Connect with me on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or WhatsApp (+001-408-489-4785). Happy to help! 🙂
Add Comment