TEACHING a robot to stay upright is as easy as learning to ride a bicycle or
a unicycle, according to an international team of robotics researchers. The
researchers have taught a robotic wheel to recover its balance by imitating the
way that people learn to ride a bicycle.
Called Gyrover, the wheel was developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon
University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It consists of little more than a small,
bulbous wheel driven by an internal motor and it steers itself by tilting a
gyroscope.
One advantage of this design is that it is very stable at speed, just…
