Thinking Outside the Box: The Monowheel Robot

A long time ago, before studio executives sucked all the remaining lifeforce out of it, fans of Star Wars eagerly anticipated the release of a new movie in the series. One that would finally continue the epic story of the original trilogy after years of diversions with mostly unsatisfying prequels.

The year was 2015. The movie was Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens. And though it was something of a rehash of the original trilogy, the talented visual and special effects team who made it succeeded in creating a new character that captured the fandom’s imagination.

We are, of course, referring to the BB-8 astromech droid, which in retrospect, was perhaps the most realistic character introduced in the new movie because it was based on new, but existing technology. Not proto-AI, not CGI, but actual patented mechanical and electrical components. The movie’s producers put a featurette together to show off how they did it.

Meanwhile, the studio executives made sure there was a BB-8 Droid toy available in stores when the movie came out as part of their vision for sucking the lifeforce out of Star Wars by hoovering up cash from the movies’ fans.

Including droids as characters that could be easily turned into marketable toys has always been their purpose in the Star Wars franchise. Because when you really think about what their roles are in the Star Wars universe, they don’t make much sense. For example, why wouldn’t the people who make X-wing fighters just build-in whatever it is that droids do in X-wing fighters into the X-wing fighters themselves?

When you think about it that way, why on earth would anyone even try to make a robot like the BB-8 droid with the form factor of a ball with a static component that rides on top of it? Where would it ever make sense to have a technology like that?

Over ten years after BB-8′s cinematic introduction, we might finally have an answer to that question that actually does make sense. Rollo Robotics has created the world’s first autonomous and self-balancing monowheel robot, which in addition to being inspired in part by BB-8, has potential applications in mind for which it would be useful.

The following video introduces the company’s prototype monowheel robot technology:

If it pans out, the monowheel robot’s cost effective means of monitoring and patrolling open areas of ground could reshape how security is provided at facilities that require it. Beyond that, monowheel robots could find use as probes for exploring the surfaces of the moon and planets.

But as Core77‘s Rain Noe observed, the technology has a big challenge that would limit its adoption: stairs.

But to overcome that challenge, perhaps we can turn to another depleted sci-fi/fantasy series for the obvious solution:

We wouldn’t say the Daleks‘ solution to their problems with stairs makes much sense either, but at least somebody is out there thinking about these things!