In addition to being cool, it may be useful in search and rescue
Question: How many wheels does it take to keep a Polish unicycle robot upright and stationary?
Answer: One.
(What? You were expecting a unicycle joke?)
From a story at New Scientist:
Previous efforts to create a mono-wheel that is stable when stationary, like the Gyrover, developed by Ben Brown at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, have a second wheel that spins within the first to act as a gyroscope. But this uses a lot of energy.
So Patryk Cieslak, a PhD student at AGH University of Science and Technology in Cracow, Poland, and colleagues decided to take a different approach. Their robot is packaged within a single wheel: its motor, battery and controls remain stationary in the centre of the wheel while a rubber tyre rotates around the outside.
The story has additional detail and an academic paper providing even more can be purchased here for $31.50.
I don’t know where you can buy a unicycle robot or what it might cost.
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