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OrbSwarm Autonomous Spherical Robotics
OrbSwarm consists of a set of NASA Ames K10 research rovers. Self-propelled, with GPS guidance, they move around in defined areas.
(OrbSwarm NASA Ames K10 research rover)
Take a look as OrbSwarm bots roll around.
(OrbSwarm and friends robot video)
For sfnal references, take a look at Rotundus And Rover: Robotic And Fictional Guardians.
Update 04-Jun-2025: Compare this item with the spherical Ruum robot from The Ruum by Arthur Porges.
Jim Irwin had once worked with mercury, and for a second it seemed to him that a half-filled leather sack of the liquid metal had rolled into the clearing. For the quasi-spherical object moved with just such a weighty, fluid motion. But it was not leather; and what appeared at first a disgusting wartiness, turned out on closer scrutiny to be more like the functional projections of some outlandish mechanism. Whatever the thing was, he had little time to study it, for after the spheroid had whipped out and retracted a number of metal rods with bulbous, lens-like structures at their tips, it rolled towards him at a speed of about five miles an hour.
End update.
From BotJunkie.
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