RoboBall. © Kaitlyn Johnson/Texas A&M
Graduate students are helping improve RoboBall, a unique robot designed as a perfect sphere with no top or bottom.
Because it can’t flip over, RoboBall’s shape allows it to reach places wheeled or legged robots can’t, from deep lunar craters to sandy beaches. Still, the idea was once set aside when its creator, Ambrose, shifted focus to rovers for astronauts.
RoboBall. © Emily Oswald/Texas A&M
When Ambrose joined Texas A&M University in 2021, he revived RoboBall with support from the Chancellor’s Research Initiative and the Governor’s University Research Initiative.
Now, 20 years after its design, RoboBall is rolling again by students Rishi Jangale and Derek Pravecek at Texas A&M.
At the RAD Lab, Jangale and Pravecek, Ph.D. students in the J. Mike Walker ’66 Department of Mechanical Engineering, are leading efforts to prepare RoboBall for new and challenging terrain.
“Dr. Ambrose has given us such a cool opportunity. He gives us the chance to work on RoboBall however we want,” said Jangale, who began work on RoboBall in 2022. “We manage ourselves, and we get to take RoboBall in any direction we want.”
source Texas A&M
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