Gimball robot is a recent advancement in flying robots, which can maintain its due course even after crashing into any obstruction. Conventionally, robots find it difficult to maintain the line of course after any bump and after hitting, tend to go in arbitrary directions. The Gimball robot designed by EPFL PhD student Adrien Briod and his colleague Przemyslaw Mariusz Kornatowski, is a sensor free robot and is based on gyroscopic stabilization system to maintains its sense of direction.
The robot consists of double carbon flexible spherical enclosure of 34cm in diameter which keeps the robot’s delicate parts safe from any collision and maintains its correct direction, twin propellers for power and fins for steering. The overall idea is inspired from insects, deigned to bounce back after any crash without any major breakdown and trauma.
Most of the robots are equipped with fragile sensor to deduce the surroundings for navigation, which are heavy and makes the cruising difficult and so are not helpful in odd terrains and situations. The simple design enables the gimball robot (weighting just 370 grams) to move with ease in any unseen tumultuous terrain.
The robot equipped with a compass and altitude sensor has already been tested in the forest above Lausanne, Switzerland. Its performance was extraordinary, as it bounced back after collision from several trees and yet maintained its track for several hundred meters.
Gimball robot has been designed to operate efficiently even in toughest situations like earthquake. Equipped with a camera, the bot may provide valuable information to the rescue team or during fire and other such situation. Further research will make this robot more intelligent to tackle even more complex situation more aptly. Just in case you are eager to see its prototype in personnel, the display is at the IREX conference in Tokyo, Japan from November 5-9, 2013.
Source: Phy.org
