When he was a boy playing soccer in New Jersey, Greg Schroll thought about how cool it would be to make a ball go in any direction he wanted.
Schroll, now 23 and pursuing a master’s degree in mechanical engineering at Colorado State University, has been able to develop just such a ball using household parts and a lot of ingenuity.
One day, he hopes he can unleash an army of his robots to explore new planets and go on search-and-rescue missions.
“My ultimate crazy vision is to drop thousands of them from the back of an airplane so they can land, hit the ground running and go do their thing,” Schroll said Friday.
Schroll’s idea for a spherical robot made him one of the “10 Most Brilliant Innovators of 2009,” according to Popular Mechanics. The magazine also bestowed on him its Next Generation Breakthrough Award in ceremonies this week in New York.
Schroll said his love for robotics began in childhood when he and his dad — also a mechanical engineer — built an all-terrain tank and an air cannon to smash pumpkins in their backyard in Chatham, N.J.
He decided to take his soccer-ball idea and put it to work while working on his undergraduate thesis at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He used a globe from a gumball machine to make up the robot’s polycarbonate outer shell. A red rubber playground ball was sliced into tracking that helps the robot glide. The inside is comprised of parts from a remote-control car and helicopter.
Other spherical robots have been developed, but were limited in their mobility. “They would get caught in ruts in the ground or stalled or turned around,” Schroll said.
Schroll solved that problem by placing a set of gyroscopes that store momentum within the sphere.
The prototype — which weighs about 35 pounds and is 18 inches in diameter — can climb a steep flight of stairs because of its stored momentum, Schroll said.
“It’s similar to how satellites and spacecraft can control their momentum through the use of gyroscopes,” he said.
Schroll — who is working on an improved model — said the spherical robots could be used for planetary exploration, search-and-rescue jobs, surveillance and hazardous-environment assessment. The robot is enclosed within a rugged and resilient shell with no obvious points of weakness, and its shape prevents it from being turned upside down.
It can also be sealed for amphibious work.
Schroll’s work is truly unique and he has few equals in his field, said CSU mechanical engineering professor David Alciatore, Schroll’s mentor.
Monte Whaley: 720-929-0907 or mwhaley@denverpost.com
