Kickbot: A Spherical Autonomous Robot

Kickbot is a custom built autonomous robot which wanders in its environment searching for people who will kick it. Kickbot’s novel spherical body and solid construction make it ideal for kicking, and its carefully counterweighted central disk helps stabilize the robot after tumbling. Kickbot has a two part distributed control system which uses various sensors to avoid obstacles, detect when it is being kicked, and find people to antagonize. There were three main objectives we hoped to achieve by building Kickbot. First, we wanted to build an autonomous robot from scratch. Too often it seems that building a robot simply means obtaining a pre-made robot control board, attaching a few sensors and four wheels, and then programming it to move around. We lacked the financial means to purchase a commercial control board with an advanced embedded microprocessor, but more importantly we wanted the experience of creating our own control system and experimenting with our own ideas for an interesting robot body. Part of what makes robotics so exciting is that it includes so many varied aspects: mechanical, electrical, behavioral, and control. The second objective for building Kickbot is more specific. Most robots have strict orientation requirements such that they will not function correctly, if at all, when turned upside down or placed on their side. We wanted to create a robot where falling over was not a failure mode. Kickbot is specifically designed to correctly orient itself when knocked over or after bouncing into an obstacle. The third objective was to experiment with various emergent behaviors with a robot that we built ourselves. We were able to observe Kickbot exhibiting several interesting Figure 1: View of Kickbot