A Brief History of Ball Robot / Spherical Robot

A. Early History
Engineers are often advised not to invent the wheel again.
However, a quick search of the U.S. Patent office database
immediately reveals more than 50 patents related to the autonomous
mobility of a ball‐shaped object. These patents date from 1897 to
2003 and all comprise a motorized counterweight that is used to
generate ball motion. Obviously, the number of related patents in the
USA and worldwide is much larger than found by this quick search.
The number of similar one‐wheeled and two‐wheeled counterweight‐
based vehicles is even larger.
The first vehicles were small spring‐powered toys with one fixed
axis of rotation. The patents concentrate on methods of storing and
converting spring energy with different mechanical solutions. Adding
steering capability to the toys has been a challenge from early times.
In 1906, B. Shorthouse patented a design that offered the possibility
of manually adjusting the position of the internal counterweight in
order to make the ball roll along a desired curved trajectory instead of
a straight path (U.S. Patent 819,609). Ever since, mechanisms have
been patented to produce irregular rolling paths for self‐propelled
balls. The toy shown in Fig. 1 dates to 1909 and shows one innovative
way of producing a wobbly rolling motion for an amusing toy.

Fig. 1. Mechanical Toy by E.E. Cecil, (U.S. Patent 933,623)

 The counterweight was usually constructed with a lever
rotating around the ball's axis. Mobility was provided by generating
torque directly to the lever. The amount of torque needed from the
power system was directly proportional to the mass of the
counterweight and length of the lever arm. In 1918, A.D. McFaul
patented a "hamster‐ball” design (a derivative of a hamster running
wheel), where the counterweight was moved by friction between the
ball's inner surface and traction wheels mounted on the
counterweight (Fig. 2, left). In this construction, the length of lever
arm does not any more affect the required power-system torque, and
similar mobility can be achieved with less internal torque. Obviously,
this is of great benefit to spring-driven toys, at least if they have a
large diameter.
A mechanical spring as a power source was displaced by a
battery and an electric motor in a patented design by J.M. Easterling
in 1957 (U.S. Patent 2,949,696). Consequently, electric motors were
introduced with several different mechanical solutions that were
already at least partly familiar from earlier spring‐driven inventions.
Further development introduced shock and attitude sensing with
mercury switches that would control motor operation and rolling
direction, as well as adding light and sound effects.
An active second freedom for a motorized ball was introduced
by McKeehan in 1974, as shown in Fig. 2, (right). In addition to
reversible rolling motion, upon impact against an obstacle, the ball
would also change its axis of rotation with the aid of additional
motors. This opened the way towards radio‐ controlled (introduced in
1985 in U.S. Patent 4,541,814) and, finally, computer controlled, ball‐
robots. As (radio‐controlled) toy‐cars became more common following
1984, they were frequently inserted inside the ball to provide a fully
steerable 2‐dof. rolling toy (U.S. Patent 4,438,588).

Fig. 2. (Left) Early "hamster‐ball” by A.D. McFaul, (U.S. Patent 1,263,262).

(Right) A 2‐dof. ball by R.W. McKeehan, (U.S. Patent 3,798,835).
Spherical vehicles to carry people were first developed for
marine applications, like the one of W. Henry in 1889 (Fig. 3, left).
This vehicle, with its passenger floating in the water, was balanced by
ballast mass and the weight of the passenger. The vehicle would move
in a manner very similar to the toys described above with balanced
 mass inside and with their outer surface rolling. Steering would be
achieved by tilting the axis of rotation by moving the passenger mass
inside the vehicle. In 1941, J.E. Reilley patented a ball‐shaped car
(Fig. 3, right) and later different types of chairs were inserted inside
the spherical vehicle. In some cases, a person would enter a ball and
operate it directly without any additional means, like a hamster inside
his running wheel.

Fig. 3. (Left) A marine vessel by W. Henry (U.S. Patent 396,486). (Right) A

Spherical vehicle by J.E. Reilley (U.S. Patent 2,267,254).
The most recent inventions introduce new novel solutions to
alter the position of the ball's center‐of‐gravity. One example is the
Spherical Mobile Robot by R. Mukherjee, patented in 2001, that uses
several separate weights that are moved with the aid of linear feed
systems (U.S. Patent 6,289,263).  
B. History on Development
The first successful ball-bot was developed in 2005 by Prof.
Ralph Hollis of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
(CMU), Pittsburgh, USA and it was patented in 2010. The CMU Ball-
bot is built to be of human size, both in height and foot print. Prof.
Hollis and his group at CMU demonstrated that the ball-bot can be
robust to disturbances including kicks and shoves and can also
handle collisions with furniture and walls. They showed that a variety
of interesting human-robot physical interaction behaviors can be
developed with the ball-bot, and presented planning and control
algorithms to achieve fast, dynamic and graceful motions using the
ball-bot. They also demonstrated the ball-bot's capability to
autonomously navigate human environments to achieve point-point
and surveillance tasks. A pair of two degrees of freedom (DOF) arms
was added to the CMU Ball-bot in 2011, making it the first and
currently, the only ball-bot in the world with arms.
Fig. 4. The CMU Ball-bot, the first successful ball-bot, built by Prof. Ralph
Hollis (not in picture) at Carnegie Mellon University, USA in 2005

In 2005, around the same time when CMU Ball-bot was

introduced, a group of researchers at University of Tokyo
independently presented the design for a human-ridable ball-bot
wheelchair that balances on a basketball named "B. B. Rider".
However, they reported only the design and never presented any
experimental results. Around the same time, László Havasi from
Hungary independently introduced another ball-bot called ERRO-
Sphere. The robot did not reliably balance, and no further work was
presented.
Since the introduction of CMU Ball-bot in 2005, several other
groups around the world have developed ball-bots. Prof. Masaaki
Kumagai developed BallIP in 2008 at Tohoku Gakuin University,
Japan. Prof. Kumagai and his group demonstrated the capability of
ball-bots to carry loads and be used for cooperative transportation.
They developed a number of small ball-bots and demonstrated
cooperative transportation using them. A group of mechanical
engineering students at ETH Zurich, Switzerland developed Rezero in
2010. Rezero re-emphasized the fast and graceful motions that can be
achieved using ball-bots.

Fig. 5. The BallIP, developed by Prof. Masaaki Kumagai at Tohoku Gakuin

University, Japan in 2008

Yorihisa Yamamoto (Japan) inspired by Tomás Arribas's

project, developed a ball-bot using LEGO Mindstorms NXT in 2009.
He created a detailed demo to build, model and create controllers
using MATLAB. A group of mechanical engineering students at
University of Adelaide (Australia) developed both a LEGO ball-bot and
a full-scale ball-bot in 2009. A group of students from ITMO
University (Russia) introduced an algorithm and constructed a ball-
bot based on Lego NXT robotics kit which performed stability with
only two actuators used.