27 ms·
I designed a cube that balances itself on a corner
- andrewp123 3y agoThis is really cool. Would love to see a basic analysis of the physics - I know it's just basic angular momentum and torque. Are reaction wheels somehow intuitive and don't require you to think about these things?
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoMost of the dynamics and kinematics involved are thoroughly discussed in the research work that has been published by the authors of the original Cubli! For example: https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mavt/dynamic-systems-n-control/idsc-dam/Research_DAndrea/Cubli/RevisedManuscript.pdf https://ethz.ch/content/dam/ethz/special-interest/mavt/dynam...
- lovegrenoble 3y agoYou have to make fundraising to produce it on https://www.kickstarter.com https://www.kickstarter.com
- geor9e 3y agoNow put some of those reaction wheels in one of these, to give them lateral self balancing https://alienrides.com/collections/electric-unicycles https://alienrides.com/collections/electric-unicycles
- CodeWriter23 3y agoMy kind of crazy mf.
- yazzku 3y agoIt deserves to be said fully spelled out: this guy is one hell of a crazy motherfucker. Respect.
- matthewtse 3y agoJust subscribed to your YouTube channel, hope to see more Mechanical Marvels from you! It's rare to feel an unstoppable childlike smile creep onto my face, the smile of experiencing joy+wonder, and I felt that today. Also super impressed by the build quality and the welds you made for this hobby project.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoThank you!
- syntaxing 3y agoAs a former MechE, those parts look like it cost a pretty penny but damn, the results are worth it. Naively, you should be able to plug figure 21 into simulink to get the tuned constants. Though to be honest, getting the system constants will probably take just as much time and for a one off piece that’s for fun, hand tuning is more than fine.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoFusion 360 calculates things like moments of inertia and weight, and this was very helpful since the controller requires these parameters to convert control inputs to torques, for example. I still had to tune the controller gains, of course. (Which I did by hand.)
- syntaxing 3y agoIs there anyway to tune the controller gains beforehand? Also if you don’t mind me asking, how much did everything cost you? This looks super fun and I’m debating to build one.
- FabHK 3y agoThe article lists a BOM of EUR 2500.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoBobrow’s research mentions a set of equations that can be used to derive the controller gains based on a set of dynamics-related parameters of the cube (like inertia, mass), but the results were unsatisfactory, so I tuned the gains by hand. But in theory, yes.
- tharakam 3y agoIt's so beautiful! Love it!
- johnea 3y agoReally Interesting! I had never seen it before. I would suggest v2 have photovoltaic panels on all sides so it could run indefinitely on a sunlit windowsill...
- yazzku 3y agoDamn, I have been living a lie. Now I won't be able to sleep until I can build one for myself.
- tremarley 3y agoThis looks excellent. How could someone make this more silent though? How does one quieten fan sounds?
- xxs 3y ago6000rpm cannot be silent, it causes the air to move and it's perceived as noise.
- tremarley 3y agoIt would be cool if a gigantic one of this were made. People would love to see this in a museum.
- po__studio 3y agoI want to buy your stuff!
- po__studio 3y agoI’m looking for more companies like these: https://www.evilmadscientist.com/ https://www.evilmadscientist.com/ https://teenage.engineering/ https://teenage.engineering/
- kristianpaul 3y ago2500 BOM
- Williams77 3y ago[flagged]
- leros 3y agoVery cool project. I'm curious, was the bulk of that £2500 cost tied up in any one part of the build? I'm suspecting the CNC work.
- fortran77 3y agoPut this in a sealed wooden box and you'd have the basis for a magic routine that would fool many people. Especially when the box and what it's standing on can be inspected. When the motors aren't spinning, if this were enclosed, it would feel normal.
- mcapodici 3y agoThe title undersells it. It balances itself on a corner, can be knocked about and rotates itself to. And can balance on an edge.
- dkarras 3y agoI remember seeing this exact thing a couple years ago. Or is my brain bugging out? very cool nonetheless.
- KTibow 3y agoYeah it says it was inspired by the Cubli
- soheil 3y agoShould make the frame out of wood or some soft material so no one thinks you welded it to the table.
- soheil 3y agoGyros were also used to balance a massive passenger monorail in 1962 without a Raspberry-pi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail
- bcherny 3y agoI wonder why cars and trains don’t use tech like this to keep passengers stable, even when the road/track has bumps. Something like this, built into shock absorbers, could be revolutionary for transport.
- altairTF 3y agoI would say cost, imagine the R&D of the part itselft, but the cost of it in maintenance to the final user. I believe citroen had electromagnetic shocks in the 90's and it didn't catch much momentum but if you see the videos of it working, its exactly like you said, smooth as heck drive throwgh bumps.
- julianeon 3y agoHa, this project does seem extremely Dutch! Whimsical yet practical(ish).
- a-dub 3y agovery cool. reminds me of the alamo sculpture in astor place in front of the site of the old cooper union engineering building.
- mastersummoner 3y agoYou know, once you implement the braking system, it seems like you could make it walk across your desk, corner over corner. Might be hell on the wood surface though.
- jacquesm 3y agoCover the sides in something soft? Also it might be possible to control the fall so that the reaction wheel spins up just before estimated impact.
- Uptrenda 3y agoIf you showed this to someone in the stone age they would literally think you were a god and probably worship the cube.
- Ostatnigrosh 3y agoI have been obsessed with this balancing cube for years now
- Ostatnigrosh 3y agoI have been obsessed with this balancing cube forever now
- Borzadaran 3y agoVery cool project.
- retrolumi 3y agoThe second I clicked on the video I instantly recognized those synths as being Kevin Macleod's music. Very iconic
- Jakesbeb 3y ago[flagged]
- Shinchy 3y agoThat is so cool!
- sixhobbits 3y agoWould love if HN had a section like 'show hn' specifically for long-form, lone-hacker, impressive stuff like this. Not sure exactly what the metrics would be that qualify an article to belong there but every few months I see something like this that has that 'wow' factor, and wish there was an easy way to collect all of them.
- swyx 3y agoi mean this sort of thing usually gets like >1k votes so thats an easy enough filter?
- devilsAdv0cate 3y ago[dead]
- sim7c00 3y agothis is such a crazy awesome thing. i can only imagine the magic it would seem if you put an enclosure around it to hide the mechanism... :'). - me with no mechanical background would definitely not guess how this works. respect and thanks for making this wonderful thing!
- scotty79 3y agoAre mechanical breaks necessary for cube jumping up? What are the limits of electronic breaking of those motors?
- extraduder_ire 3y agoAny thoughts about making it lay itself back down on a qi charger (or pogo pins) when its battery is getting low, or its reaction control wheels get saturated? I assume that would wait until after it has brakes to pick itself up.
- wmf 3y agoI wonder if you could put a coil in the corner and power it continuously. The distance might be a problem.
- iamsanteri 3y agoCoooool!! Well done! Now do it in JavaScript :’D
- Snawoot 3y agoThe trick is just to hang it and film upside down /s
- jwr 3y agoThis is such an impressive engineering achievement. As someone who designs electronics and builds mechanical devices, I find this project spectacularly impressive!
- pfdietz 3y agoI like how it automatically unloads the momentum wheels.
- DrNosferatu 3y agoAwesome! Now make it walk using two vertices (close to each other) as the two feet ;)
- neoberg 3y agoI am not very familiar with controls engineering. Can this machine tilt or balance in a tilted position?
- stephen_g 3y agoVery cool, and I love how amazing it looks with decently machined metal parts - 3D printing is cool and all, but I do get a little tired of the characteristic messy look of those projects so this is a very nice change! I really think more people should try modelling parts to have machined, now that cheap manufacturing has become more accessible in recent years. You can tell the designer likely has some proper engineering experience not just by the nice designs of each part and how well the thing works, but also by the use of Torx screws!
- m463 3y agoYou should put a solar panel or two on it. Put it in a window, stay charged. Even track the sun. maybe a kickstand for nighttime. Could also magnetically levitate to "get up" if there was a coil underneath it.
- pkphilip 3y agoThis is actually such a cool project! Great job!
- webdoodle 3y ago> ANOTHER USELESS MACHINE?! Absolutely not. Gyroscopic systems have been used to keep ships floating (and moving) for many years. I also wonder if it could be used in buildings for earthquake mitigation... https://www.wired.com/story/seakeeper-stable-ship-system/ https://www.wired.com/story/seakeeper-stable-ship-system/
- staplung 3y agoIn William Gibson's The Peripheral (the book, haven't seen the show myself) there's something like a weaponized version of this: ``` “What were you in, up there? Mason says you’re training.” “Kind of like a washing machine, inertial propulsion. Big-ass fly-wheels inside.” “Washing machine?” “About three hundred pounds. Big red cube. I’d just learned to balance it on one corner, then rotate, when they made me come back.” “What’s it for?” “Fuck if I know. Wouldn’t want to meet one in a dark alley.” ```
- drakenot 3y agoHow effective would it be to build a neural network that controls the reaction wheel motors?
- ijhuygft776 3y agoa guy designed a drone controlled with the same idea.....
- phkahler 3y agoRegarding brakes... I don't know if it's good enough for this project but a 3-phase motor will produce a braking torque when shorting all three phases together. Some gate drivers even have an input or way to trigger this function by turning on all low-side FETs or all high-side. The amount of torque depends a lot on the specific motor design and the speed when applied. Not sure if this technique would be good enough for the project.
- jurgenaut23 3y agoWow, it would be real fun to work on a ML-driven approach to learn the controller... and maybe do more exciting stuff than just attitude control.
- sema4hacker 3y agoI'm actually more enamored with the cool look of the thing rather than the fact that it can balance.
- ayhanfuat 3y agoSame. Immediately checked if it is for sale (apparently it costs $2500 if you do it yourself).
- pavel_lishin 3y agoI wonder what the cheapest possible build for something like this is, if you loosen enough constraints - let's say, if we allow it to be externally powered, and agree that size doesn't matter. Would it be cheaper (and/or safer) to build a larger one, allowing for larger-but-slower flywheels? Could you make one out of a couple of scrap bicycles?
- JKCalhoun 3y agoWould be fun to try and low-cost it. I can already imagine replacing the aluminum face parts with laser-cut acrylic. It also sounds like the motors are another expensive part that likely can be low-costed. The stainless steel flywheels though..... No ideas.
- newaccount74 3y agoIf you can make the flywheels flat, you could cut them with a waterjet, which would be cheaper and faster than milling. And I assume that you can use normal steel instead of stainless steel.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoI wonder if it would be possible to balance this thing by sloshing fluid around, or with linear actuators moving weights around. Or maybe a pair of motors, moving two circles with weights on their rims around, to shift the center of gravity around until it's stable enough to park them on opposite sides?
- dave333 3y agoSo cool! Wondering if this technology can be used to control spacecraft attitude or does it require a fixed support? How heavy do the flywheels need to be in relation to the total weight?
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoThank you! The weight of each wheel is approximately 220 g, whereas the total weight of the cube including wheels is 1700 g.
- auxym 3y agoAs mentioned in the article, reaction wheels are the standard method used to control satellite attitude.
- glfharris 3y agoTotally does work, lots of spacecraft use reaction wheels to control attitude.
- CaptainOfCoit 3y ago> Wondering if this technology can be used to control spacecraft attitude It can indeed, and is already used in the wild today! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wheel#Examples_of_spacecraft_using_reaction_wheels https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_wheel#Examples_of_spa...
- jessriedel 3y agoThat list has three examples, but to be clear for others: Nearly every satellite has reaction wheels. There are literally tens of thousands of reaction wheels in orbit.
- dave333 3y agoI guess I have watched Apollo 13 too many times and was under the mistaken impression spacecraft still used propellant thrusters for attitude control.
- amelius 3y agoNext I want to see a pencil that balances itself on its tip.
- ASalazarMX 3y agoIf the pencil can be very short, just put this cube on top of it.
- amelius 3y agoIt would lose its form factor of a pencil.
- quickthrower2 3y agoJust build up the pencil using light material like paper. Cross section of balanced cube is a hexagon so it is perfect.
- pavel_lishin 3y agoWhat about a coin that always lands on its edge?
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoNo worries: https://youtu.be/woCdjbsjbPg https://youtu.be/woCdjbsjbPg
- rq1 3y agoProbability courses would be funny with that thing. Roll the dice.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoThe house always wins!
- otto2 3y agoCool functionality aside, it looks beautiful.
- gniv 3y agoThis is cool. Is this how robots normally balance themselves, or are there implementations that don't require spinning wheels?
- phkahler 3y agoIf you've got 2 wheels side by side like a Segway, all you need is the IMU and those 2 wheels.
- mrjet 3y agoMost robots are passively balanced by having multiple wheels on the ground. Walking robots balance actively without active gyros by moving their limbs. Spacecraft (which most roboticists would call robots) typically orient themselves using a combination of reaction wheels, magnetic torquers and thrusters. The reaction wheels spin rotate the aircraft by “taking” angular momentum into their own rotation. They don’t require a local magnetic field or the expenditure of fuel, so are a nice choice.
- CaptainOfCoit 3y ago> or are there implementations that don't require spinning wheels Tons of different implementations out there for balancing. Maybe the most common one is the one we humans use, which requires zero wheels :)
- noman-land 3y ago
- omoikane 3y agoMy first reaction when I see one of these is "where can I buy one?" And then I realize that it's not unlike having an open-face blender with those flywheels spinning at 6000 rpm. I am not sure I would feel comfortable with something like that near my hands.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoMy envisioned solution to this - very real! - danger is to attach some very thin round sheets of steel to the wheels such that you can’t stick your fingers in them.
- mrb 3y agoHow about just plexiglass sheets mounted on the 6 faces of the cube? With screws so they can be removed easily.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoThat would be fine too but I dislike the idea for aesthetic reasons.
- binarymax 3y agoMaybe some thin plexiglass around it would be fine - not sure if it would compromise the mechanism though.
- hirako2000 3y agoOn sundays I usually get hyped reaching new heights with code. Gratified by pushing perseverance and crearivity. then I come across posts like this one and feel totally powerless, having very short patience span, and too scared to even try such things.
- ASalazarMX 3y agoWhy are you on Hacker News instead of practicing your software engineering skills? -50 points for Griffindor!
- pavel_lishin 3y agoYeah, but this is kind of orthogonal to what you and I do. I felt pretty good over the past few weeks after finally starting to learn React on the side, and building something that some of my friends are going to use. Sure, it doesn't have the "whoa" factor, but it also didn't cost $2500 to build (not including the years [decades?]) spent learning.
- rvnx 3y agoIf you feel bad about yourself because of that, think of it not like something personal, it's a lot connected to the environment you are from, and some factors cannot be controlled. It's actually the ultimate sign of luxury when you have time to study, AND resources to go to a good school, AND enough free time and money to spend on gadgets, AND you can afford to throw thousands on something useless, etc. (All that said, the creation is cool and very nice work from Willem specifically)
- cortesoft 3y agoIf someone else being better at something discourages you, you are going to have a bad time in life. Very few people are going to be the best at the world at anything, but that doesn’t matter. It doesn’t change what you can do.
- hirako2000 3y agoIt isn't so much discouragement. And it's a lot more like a great painter who would listen to a pianist masterpiece, and know very well achieving that level of skill in that totally different art field would be almost impossible = time is limited, would involve giving up the mastery or continue to improve in the visual artistry. It isn't someone much better at something. It's someone much better at something entirely different yet quite related. It doesn't change what one can do that's true. Comparison with oneself is mentally healthier for sure. But humans compare themselves with who they can see, the internet gives us a view of what virtually everyone is capable of.
- navane 3y agoReminds me of the self balancing train that rode on a single, small rail track. Project got cancelled because the double rail system was already well established.
- ravenstine 3y agoIsn't it more likely that idea got abandoned because a failure of the balancing system would be catastrophic?
- rvnx 3y ago+ intensive in terms of energy usage + needed a second gyro to feel like you are standing in a flat environment.
- IggleSniggle 3y agoIirc the second gyro is necessary to ensure the train doesn't course correct itself right off the rail in the case of a curve? Coupled together to make the "correct" side more responsive for any given direction? Dunno.
- FinnKuhn 3y agoyou would also need a gyro in each train car, so that doesn't help
- navane 3y agoAs a sibling of yours pointed out above, the train worked with CMGs, their energy usage seems not too much: "CMGs are also far more power efficient. For a few hundred watts and about 100 kg of mass, large CMGs have produced thousands of newton meters of torque. A reaction wheel of similar capability would require megawatts of power."
- progval 3y agoDetails for the curious: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyro_monorail https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYzuAJeg3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYzuAJeg3M
- cmehdy 3y ago> Like any experienced controls engineer, I spent a few days flipping the signs of various signals before I got them right. As somebody with a M.Sc. in controls & signal processing (who ended up doing way more boring things), I always figured that I was doing that because I wasn't experienced enough. Turns out I also had the sign wrong on that one all along!
- pavelstoev 3y agoThis is precisely how I passed the lab portion of my Control Systems course in undergrad engineering.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AnarchismIsCool 3y agoThere are satellites in orbit right now that have their reaction wheels harnessed backwards and have a x *= -1.0; //DO NOT TOUCH in the codebase. Everyone does it, though usually you do the test before you duct tape it to the top of a few thousand kg of explosives and push the red button :)
- Matumio 3y agoWhen studying electrical engineering (during all the advanced control theory math and stuff) we were told that this is the official way to do it. If your PID controller doesn't work at first, second or third attempt, you don't run for your math books, you tweak it and try again until it works.
- kloch 3y agoQuaternions are hard to get right, and impossible to get right the first time. https://twitter.com/grapefrukt/status/1618517709767016450 https://twitter.com/grapefrukt/status/1618517709767016450
- bchasknga 3y agoYou are not alone. I've come to terms with the reality that every controller I've designed and implemented will always need a good amount of unit test coverage to ensure proper behavior (like signs and directions)...
- neom 3y agoGreat art. This other thing he built is totally different, but just as fun to look at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9jyNIWsRvI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9jyNIWsRvI I love engineers who make art so much.
- amelius 3y agoI wouldn't say this other project is totally different. In fact, he can probably easily combine the two!
- neom 3y agoIt would be fun if the LEDs changed or did something special based on the rotation.. :o
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoThis is definitely something I’m thinking about doing! I would ideally like to keep the reaction wheels visible though. Putting LEDs inside the wheels for a persistence of vision effect might be cool.
- sorenjan 3y agoI remember seeing his M&M sorting machine several years ago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGlMV4sHnk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ceGlMV4sHnk
- MOARDONGZPLZ 3y agoThis is extremely cool. Would love one that separates M&Ms from Skittles, which is a constant problem.
- almostnormal 3y agoEven the sorting by color would be useful if Van Halen was still touring. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_IxqdAgNJck https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_IxqdAgNJck
- kibwen 3y agoVery cool! I'd like to see one of these made into a permanent sculpture, where the battery is removed and energy is provided via the contact plate itself.
- neom 3y agoWe need to get the guy who made this one and Tony Rosenthal together, unfortunately, however, Tony is dead. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rosenthal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Rosenthal
- crazygringo 3y agoThat Alamo sculpture was the first thing I thought of! Fun fact: it spins, even though that was never intended. [1] Making a public sculpture size version seems really cool on the one hand. On the other hand, it seems incredibly dangerous if it could crush someone to death if the power or electronics failed... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_(sculpture) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamo_(sculpture)
- crazygringo 3y agoI'm sure this is a dumb question because I never studied electrical engineering, but can you supply power with just a single point of contact? Rather than the two contacts/wires that wall plugs and batteries have? (And is a contact plate even safe?) Or would wireless power be the way to go, the same way we charge our phones these days? Could you fit a large enough coil close enough in the tip?
- philipwhiuk 3y agoCan someone explain the reason for the massive font-size on the website?
- enjoyitasus 3y agoThe OA
- renewiltord 3y agoHaha this is great, dude. Man it looks so well machined too.
- johanneskanybal 3y agoWell I need one.
- stuaxo 3y agoWhat a pleasing object.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoCall me reckless, but I'd totally pay to climb a bigger one, with holds along the edges. I just wanna feel how it responds to my movements.
- swyx 3y agogonna be like climbing a wall of jello, or a mountain during an earthquake. fun thought experiment.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIt can be hard to commit to certain moves that you think you can do even when the wall is staying still. I think having to commit to them even when you know it's going to move would help with one's head game when they went back to stable rock.
- lh7777 3y ago> I plan to add mechanical brakes to the reaction wheels...This enables jump-up manoeuvers which in turn enable the cube to get to its equilibrium position on its own. Looking forward to this -- I always thought that was the coolest part of the Cubli project. Here's a video: https://youtu.be/n_6p-1J551Y?t=92 https://youtu.be/n_6p-1J551Y?t=92
- tgsovlerkhgsel 3y agoKnowing and seeing how it works takes away a lot of the magic, but imagine finding a completely featureless whirring metal cube... that then jumps up onto an edge, then onto a corner, and starts spinning. And is capable of doing this on any random surface. I bet that would puzzle even most people who consider themselves familiar with physics and when the cube suddenly jumps back from a corner onto a face, clearly showing that the jumping isn't just some hidden mechanism that extends, make some seriously consider the possibility of magic.
- darzu 3y agoAmazing. Now it just needs a nice wood enclosure and matching induction charging pedestal. Kickstarter please take my money!
- __MatrixMan__ 3y agoIt makes me wonder if there's a better shape than a cube for this. You'd want to be non-circular to walk up things, but you'd want a circular edge for rolling down them. I'm imagining something like two hoops forming a sphere: rotate 90 degrees to switch between roll mode and walk mode.
- javajosh 3y agoIn middle school I imagined a toy that would be a top with a similar mechanism as this cube. It could spin it's outer shell and then tilt and engage a "wheel" hoop, just a bit above the the tops tip, exchange some of of it's angular momentum for linear, right itself and build up angular momentum again. This would enable a fully enclosed, no external moving parts RC vehicle. It seems such a thing is possible now.
- mavili 3y agoImpressive work! Some people have all the time in the world it seems! That said, it's not really "designing" if you're "building" something that already exists, is it?
- sardon 3y agoI agree that "design" in the title is misleading. The main novelty of this cube is that it balances itself etc, and that was thought of and designed 12 years ago at ETH. Nonetheless, incredible work by the OP - "I built a cube that balances itself" is already extremely impressive
- jacquesm 3y agoHe didn't invent it and doesn't claim he did but he did design each and every part that could not be bought off the shelf as well as the final assembly. I'd say 'design' is more than appropriate.
- mavili 3y agoHaha lol. Downvotes for saying "building" is not "designing". Why? Seriously people are so open-minded , very tolerant, just as long as you don't upset their feelings. Hahah
- samatman 3y agoYou're confusing design with invention. People design new instances of existing classes of object all the time, from shoes, to cars, to shirts. We call this profession "design", in fact. It's what the OP did with the cube: designed one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- smolder 3y agoShirts and pants have existed a long time, but clothing designers still design new ones. This isn't an exact copy of someone else's, it just uses the same principles, so yes, it is "designed".
- maelito 3y agoMakes me think to the Brennan monorail train. Very interesting video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYzuAJeg3M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUYzuAJeg3M.
- beoberha 3y agoI very much enjoy my career as a software engineer, but man there’s a side of me that wishes I had studied something where I could even begin to build something like this. Super super cool!
- geor9e 3y agoThere is something a lot more healthy-feeling about tinkering in the shop using your hands, versus staring down a panel of colorful monospaced ascii. But the individual contributor MechE career plateaus in pay around $170k. There's no L7 or whatever pay scale. Seeing total compensation in the $300k+ range is unheard of. In software you find them all over. I'm sure there's rare exceptions but you get the gist.
- matthewtse 3y agoI felt the same yearning. I found a creative outlet in hardware, that still furthers my software engineering career, by building a custom mechanical keyboard to improve coding speed, accuracy, and efficiency. https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/hj0q8x/first_diy_keyboard_dactyl_manuform_5x6/ https://www.reddit.com/r/ErgoMechKeyboards/comments/hj0q8x/f...
- shellfishgene 3y agoYou totally can. This video [1] someone linked below comes with a github repo [2], it seems pretty straight forward to build this with access to a 3d printer and some basic electronics/soldering skills. Probably a <100$ for parts project? You also need a soldering iron and learn how to use it, but nothing of this is too hard for anyone technically inclined, especially if you have a hackerspace nearby where you can get a bit of help. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJQZFHJzwt4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJQZFHJzwt4 [2] https://github.com/remrc/Self-Balancing-Cube https://github.com/remrc/Self-Balancing-Cube
- cuu508 3y agoYou can learn all of this on your own! Like most of us learned programming ;-) Probably don't start with a self-balancing cube as the first project though. Get an Arduino or ESP board, make some leds blink and go from there.
- pradn 3y agoThis is exactly the sort of artifact you expect a wizard to have floating above their hand on a fantasy pulp's cover, circa 1955.
- jedilance 3y agoI was hoping for a DIY kit available until I saw BOM costs around 2.5k
- moffkalast 3y agoWell this is such an old project idea that they are already being sold on aliexpress both in complete form for $500 and $50 per torque axis if you want to make one from scratch. Just search up cubli.
- terom 3y agohttps://a.aliexpress.com/_EzMRNIv https://a.aliexpress.com/_EzMRNIv €250 for one axis (edge) and €500 for a 3-axis (single point). There are a couple sellers / designs.
- moffkalast 3y agoYeah there are also these separate torque wheels without the housing: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002491212698.html https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005002491212698.html The brushless type looks interesting, since you get the flywheel, the motor, an integrated driver, and encoder board all in one piece. A bit pricey still, and the encoder documentation is lacking, otherwise I might've ordered one or two already. Would be really cool to make a satelite model that hangs from the ceiling by hanging it at its center of mass on a ball joint, so it can rotate in all directions, then using these to orient it in specific ways, solar panels for charging, radio comms to give it commands, sonic humidifier as the rocket engine, etc. Maybe one day lol.
- SeanAnderson 3y agoI've got a floating planter (not this model, but similar: https://www.amazon.com/BandD-Floating-Plant-Pot-Levitating/dp/B091WYF4XF/ https://www.amazon.com/BandD-Floating-Plant-Pot-Levitating/d...). It would be cool to combine these techs. Maybe have a floating floor that the cube then balances on or something to that effect.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoThat would be cool. I thought about balancing one cube on top of another balancing cube, but sadly I’ve only got one.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- ijhuygft776 3y agoHere is one from 10 years ago that can jump up, balance, and 'walk': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_6p-1J551Y
- r-spaghetti 3y agoTry to read line 3 in the article again.
- deadbabe 3y agoHow large could these cubes scale?
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoI’m not sure! You could probably at least double the rib length if the wheels are scaled accordingly. I can however answer the opposite “how small” question to some extent by linking to this really cool project: https://youtu.be/hI5UDKaWJOo https://youtu.be/hI5UDKaWJOo
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pravint 3y agoThis is so beautiful work ! Loved it !
- markdog12 3y agoImagine showing Archimedes this device.
- anonymouskimmer 3y agoI pictured one of three things: 1) A "cube" that isn't really a cube in that the corners aren't points. 2) A cube designed to balance on the corner of a wall. 3) A cube with varying densities such that it will balance on a corner. I did not picture a mechanical device.
- rtpg 3y agoI had a McDonald’s toy that was a self balancing Superman on a point. Obviously this cube is something else in that it can move around but I wonder if it’s even possible to build a non mechanical cube that could balance on its point
- jacquesm 3y agoAnything that balances is mechanical, you will always end up moving something to compensate for being off center. For instance, you could have two fans spinning to pump air from one side of the device to the other but that would still be mechanical. You could do the same with fluid and so on. But all of it would eventually require a mechanical component to output the reaction force. Ion drives or selectively colored surfaces don't have enough impulse to do the job, those are the only non-mechanical reaction devices that I know of, but maybe there are others that could work?
- quickthrower2 3y agoSimplest might be a classic spin top toy with a paper cube shell.
- jacquesm 3y agoSpin top is definitely mechanical though.
- mnw21cam 3y agoNot necessarily. It can also be done with buoyancy. A hot air balloon just before it takes off is effectively "balanced" on its basket and does so because the bit at the top is positively buoyant. You can also get toys that stand up on the bottom of a swimming pool using the same principle.
- EGreg 3y agoWe've reached a point where machines can do pretty much everything better than humans and animals too, even without AI. Because people add solutions to problems and if they're better than previous ones, then it's downloaded to all the machines which perfectly run the software. Self-driving card etc. No animal can compete with the accuracy, reaction speed, etc. Racing Drones will be able to fly better than 99% of human operators. Cars will be able to drive better than 99% of human operators. And consistently. Google already gives direction better. Trading bots trade better. They are preferred by people and corporations, respectively. I wouldn't be surprised if computers can brute-force better scientific theories just by being fed motions of stars or other data. Like deducing Kepler's laws in 2 minutes and then going much much further, into laws that use 19283-dimensional vectors and are 99.9% of the time predictive. Monte Carlo Tree Search has done very well with chess, with AlphaZero beating all human-designed programs like Rybka, and playing much more elegant chess too. Where we need AI models is training on human-produced data (art, text on the internet, etc.) And there, it can be trained to maximize various metrics, including human satisfaction, or actual investment into an enterprise, and soon -- laughing at jokes, or agreeing to go out with someone romantically, etc. Just pick the stuff that works the best, and show it to humans as a superstimulus. In addition, the models are developing "understanding" of the latent space, the way a student in a classroom would develop this from listening to the professors explain stuff (rather than do experiments themselves). The latent space, thanks to humans, models the real world quite well, from a human perspective, and the computers can become polyglots and polymaths... ALL of them. Just download some compressed model weights onto a small computer, and it becomes more knowledgeable about topics than any human. And just like other software, the weights can be improved. But the next level is Swarms. Swarms of bots in online accounts at online platforms and communities will be able to optimize "reputation" points that they accumulate from existing humans in the communities (social capital). By doing this 24/7, and mimicking timing of humans etc. they can eventually (in aggregate) command far more reputation than any set of humans. They can also coordinate over long periods of time, as sleeper accounts, and eventually undertake any reputational attacks, including and up to having a person's own friends turn on them, ruining a famous person's reputation, having them convicted of a crime, or even foment a war etc. Whether or not humans are behind these directives at that point will be irrelevant. It's a bit like giving everyone atomic bombs or the ability to create novel viruses, except online. Someone's bound to misuse it. And because the swarms are so destructive and able to blend in, the internet will become a Dark Forest and people will try to retreat into real-life communities, where they will try to eliminate bots by having people show up periodically at events, but never completely succeed (because these same people will run bots on their own accounts). Already for years, corporations have been deploying algorithms to optimize people's addiction to TikTok, Instagram etc. with predictable effects of depression in teens, anger in adults arguing politics, etc. And that was before AI. I wrote about this here in LA Weekly: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/
- Invictus0 3y agoIt's a shame that cubli wasn't open sourced in the first place. Academics need to do better than just publish papers
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoAgreed. If only to enable others to reproduce and improve on the work.
- litoE 3y agoJust out of curiosity: do the flywheels actually stop and rotate slowly in either direction or is it just an artifact of the video?
- ElectricalUnion 3y agoOne of the optimizations that is employed to make the whole thing possible is reducing flywheel rotational speed whenever possible. Otherwise, as the video says, the reaction wheels get saturated and you lose control over that saturated axis rotation.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoYes, the reaction wheels normally rotate very slowly.
- wwarner 3y agoreally so beautiful. the writeup really revved up my imagination, thinking about how the wheels slow and reverse direction to change and then maintain equilibrium, and thinking about how wheels like this control the orientation of the hubble and jwst.
- wojtczyk 3y agoThanks for sharing! Awesome project
- tamimio 3y agoNot to downplay software engineering, but any project that mixes hardware and software together is always better and cooler in my opinion, great work!
- crazygringo 3y agoWow, watching that video is wild. It's the closest I've ever found myself to thinking, well that's just magic. The way it responds to being pushed around, it's almost like experiencing magnetism for the first time, only now it's as if it's a whole new force. It almost seems like it's alive, actively maintaining its equilibrium and resisting changes from its environment. Throw a literal tomato on it and it just adapts, not unlike the way our bodies do to changing loads. I can't wait until smaller mass-produced versions are sold on Amazon for $50, however many years from now that is! I would just love to play with something like this.
- fisian 3y agoI really agree that some control engineering applications can feel like magic. When I learned programming, I thought "Wow, I can tell a computer anything I want, as long as I take the time to program it." I have a similar feeling about control theory, just that it feels like you're "programming" the laws of physic, modifying how reality works.
- ijhuygft776 3y ago> I can't wait until smaller mass-produced versions are sold on Amazon for $50, however many years from now that is! This is old as fuck btw..... checkout youtube for 10year+ examples...
- ryanjshaw 3y agoBut in 10 years nobody has built a low-cost design right? Since OP has open sourced the build and software, that may change now.
- terom 3y agoIt will take a bit more engineering than some optimistic sign-flipping to bring it down to $50 retail (~$10 BOM). > In my case, the BOM was close to €2500, so be prepared for that. EDIT: someone pointed out that there are actually some designs available on AliExpress, e.g. https://a.aliexpress.com/_EzMRNIv https://a.aliexpress.com/_EzMRNIv €250 for one axis (edge) and €500 for a 3-axis (single point).
- pests 3y agoJames Burton on YouTube makes a lot of self balancing robots with different configurations and balancing techniques.
- stuart73547373 3y agostrong plug for onshape instead of fusion360
- Animats 3y agoNice. That stainless steel work is very nice. I didn't know PCBway did CNC machining. eMachineShop has been around for two decades, but now more companies are offering online CNC, which may bring prices down. He wants to add brakes, so he can spin up a wheel, apply the brake hard, and get enough of a change in angular momentum to bring the thing upright. I wonder if eddy current brakes would work for that. More elegant and quieter than friction brakes. Actually, just shorting the motor might work.
- dutchkiwifruit 3y agoI've considered various concepts for the brake design and think the way forward is to use friction brakes. The original Cubli uses bicycle brake pads, but this has its disadvantages. I'm thinking about using a (possibly bidrectional) band brake for my cube, similar to the one used in the "M-Blocks" [1]. Based on this video and the associated research paper, I'm quite optimistic about this kind of brake. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI5UDKaWJOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hI5UDKaWJOo.
- Panzer04 3y agoI suppose there are limits to the size and power of the motors and controllers you want to use, but those inrunners are probably not ideal either, right? I wonder if you could use an oversized hobby outrunner and achieve the same effect (probably with a large controller as well) Also, even if most hobby motors do not specify Nm/A, they usually give KV, which is actually the same value but shown in a different form :).
- jacquesm 3y agoI wonder if shorting out the windings or even more extreme, reversing polarity on the running motor would have enough of an effect to cause the jump.
- Animats 3y agoI would expect so, but the integrated motor controller might not let you do that. The power MOSFETs and motor windings should be able to handle it. It's all heat dissipation, and this only lasts a fraction of a second.
- c-smile 3y agoWhat if to keep it standing for the whole day?
- altspace 3y agoReminded me of the red cube in NYC https://publicdelivery.org/isamu-noguchi-red-cube/ https://publicdelivery.org/isamu-noguchi-red-cube/
- egberts1 3y agoYou might enjoy this whitepaper on how to dispel a high-spinning wheel. https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/313346/1-s2.0-S2405896323X00020/1-s2.0-S2405896323001362/main.pdf?X-Amz-Security-Token=IQoJb3JpZ2luX2VjEK%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FwEaCXVzLWVhc3QtMSJHMEUCIQCT5Oc340jOA4BDvdm4thDen5pL9TqijJSPQVKA%2BF4JJwIgQ%2Br3n1P0NHIt6aX8Ix9wxelRYAVZ5%2BvCIckcsQWcUTgquwUIh%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2F%2FARAFGgwwNTkwMDM1NDY4NjUiDMM68SIkVrLWRCGXfiqPBXtIgiAW2QTWiV%2F6VmC6%2FDdb3iBrqlyks1efhfAROiGZFwOoV8SfNnRdpY6nDfx%2Freyg32m7PkwFJmiiA%2FBXXTmyqEX0JjdjIBmG72k8ZdoEsKpxWiIISOrcz%2BPAJlVoKe07otnpqP88IaQei6Uq5knJYTZ6wGiugnq6OpGlVaHmVKoOoWpqz%2BqD3Kw73JgXNZCVLawivg92OaO1jzWu2X%2BCH1LMt1WZzuyQgoWwFQCeE2UUwp1TQUgUYQlJ0McV3BAXAj8frT60ooAiDPrBPVxsmcKS941rZMXJ%2BEQBuqteTOLCklq%2F0TH1VTGxnCZff08BcmZ6zx9E8rKKEfZwLU6ePpxDqDMkSt2yQN70FZW%2BpbjKZioFCJNc8ywOdudxXjA1uqq1U40vZ6XGeOe%2FWtPW%2FwIF7jkLHHBvyvQgoYXtkdwkIxWYQXj4WsBlx9WLSPRrMsx0cEcpV%2Fp%2BocCfiTeiS8%2Fs9X1so6vsRtiKuF%2FX6RPv3y4iLRWZh9Rv2PtoSP5%2BKb3rDZ5AOjP4MVp12XJuW0eYLzTKcmfEWpzzM8RxQWVF1S7W002jOmVqrUrFKH6M2c%2Bd8bBDFasjrhpZg9X%2Fs4Pos1ArYgZtI6R8f1jJIKosyLmHNGUebxMH0jgpxSwZnxDTV0PcNC33awOWNYX5U6VRVmfV3RS2EjCVd6CUjNOGiM8jP9yiIN%2FS6NTTfvtpK4DrFiRaXHixUioHTSgMYqvuxtriB0j09zRR3uKUxJppjS2XXl5coSB%2FFpaFmP1yIHap%2FHA9ibJvoL9xC8p1TkRiJeBw%2Fk8tnydrxU6VBC5TCjzeZjnv1tg%2FsS4T5hulWqcAelBUDXMIjglwWk08Y08nMDavuq2zUM%2B3eRQwrLSxrgY6sQFjBgezO4N15gHoAXe9Rp4ALyQof8zwT%2FodXe6gjKXfK2h4hXW%2BiTpNKEhiO%2BuMj2f%2FL6X9rBpbZw4IlShVtieYEbaEbSHW7MFTI9%2F9N7drz8a59U5uHWgZHDxBtLxPReP%2FOTQOn%2BCuZ%2BGt1HDqdNejo1bnLXB0p%2Bx4%2FZc4ED6GVtzqlvHxxtXR93jr49g13RUT3jakTiX5R0hrmblXtaWcdeD7%2BAFSw0YpVvUK%2BzpTIPU%3D&X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256&X-Amz-Date=20240214T071328Z&X-Amz-SignedHeaders=host&X-Amz-Expires=300&X-Amz-Credential=ASIAQ3PHCVTY6XG24X52%2F20240214%2Fus-east-1%2Fs3%2Faws4_request&X-Amz-Signature=752cfe52494743259c48e7764d3a16aa608ddf1a07c6c07d64d6c0513370cbdd&hash=bb7585b4cdfbc428149c8b15b61f2485d464c9ec4057ba9407461f784de8b4db&host=68042c943591013ac2b2430a89b270f6af2c76d8dfd086a07176afe7c76c2c61&pii=S2405896323001362&tid=spdf-8d52965f-e9b3-49b3-8ace-14d71a6ae0ce&sid=8f3f68d2774d22406058fb8453cfe638ec70gxrqa&type=client&tsoh=d3d3LnNjaWVuY2VkaXJlY3QuY29t&ua=10115e515057565350&rr=8553823819122c91&cc=us https://pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/313346/1-s2.0-S240589632... Also, there are other papers on using single-axis pivotal (flip 180 degree) to bleed off wheel speed without braking.