Murata Boy – The Bike Riding Robot

We have already featured a robot that can pull some rather spectacular dance moves on Thoughts from the Sidelines so it seemed fitting that we should follow on from that post with this remarkable bike riding robot – known as Murata Boy.

Created by the Japanese company Murata Manufacturing, Murata Boy is a 5kg, 20” (50cm) high robot whose sense of balance is so acute that he can even come to a complete standstill on his bike without even putting a foot down.

You can read more about Murata Boy and view a video of him in action after the jump.

Developed to showcase the capabilities and achievements in current technology concerning balance (balance is a notoriously difficult concept to realise in robotics) Murata Boy can not only come to a complete standstill whilst remaining perfectly balanced he can even ride his bicycle backwards as well as forwards (at up to 30” per second) whilst navigating obstacles.

Murata Boy’s means of balancing comes courtesy of two gyro sensors – one which detects position, the other detecting slant angle – as well as an ultrasonic sensor to detect obstacles. Further shock sensors detect the surface roughness. All of these sensors transmit their data to a computer that then offers the continuous stream of necessary control inputs to keep Murata Boy balanced regardless of whether he is moving or not.

To view Murata Boy in action you can either click on the image below to stream or click the download link to save to your own computer.

[etv]

You can gain a wealth of further information from Murata Boy’s official website which you can access via this link.

As well as further videos the site also a PDF down load of a papercraft kit that will enable you to to make your own Murata Boy model - just don’t expect it to perform quite as impressively as the real thing.

Below you'll find a series of links to selected related posts, simply click on the post title or the image of interest to link to the associated post. If, however, you would prefer to browse the related category or categories you can do so by clicking on associated category links above. Alternatively, if you're looking for something specific, you can search TFTS's 1000's of posts using the site search provided below.