Research D'Andrea Mohanarajah

^{M. Gajamohan, M. Muehlebach, T. Widmer, and R. D'Andrea, The Cubli: A reaction wheel based 3D inverted pendulum, in Proc. European Control Conference, July 2013 (accepted)}

^{M. Gajamohan, M. Merz, I. Thommen, and R. D'Andrea, The Cubli: A Cube that can Jump Up and Balance, in Proc. IEEE/RSJ International Conference of Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS 2012 - Algarve, Portugal), pp. 3722-3727, October, 2012. (pdf) | (bib)}

Building cubes that can jump up and balance

The Cubli is a 15 × 15 × 15 cm cube that can jump up and balance on its corner. 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 should be able to 'walk'.

The CAD drawing of the Cubli with one of the acrylic glass covers removed.

The Cubli jump-up strategy: (Left) Flat to Edge: Initially lying flat on its face, the Cubli jumps up to stand on its edge. (Right) Edge to Corner: The Cubli goes from balancing on an edge to balancing on a corner.

Videos

A video of the one dimensional Cubli prototype jumping up and balancing.

A video of the three dimensional Cubli prototype balancing.

Projects

Students that are interested in doing their Bachelor or Master's thesis on this project should contact Mohanarajah Gajamohan directly and provide a copy of their latest CV and transcripts. Some projects may be listed here.

Past Participants

Michael Merz - Cubli: Building the one dimensional prototype (MT, Fall 2011)
Tobias Widmer - Cubli: Going 3D (balancing) (BT, Spring 2012)

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