UC San Diego

The purpose of TopBot is to explore two things; top dynamics to passively stabilize a system, and a jumping mechanism as a form of locomotion for a robot. As the field of robotics is becoming a more staple part of everyday life it is used in more instances of solving problems as well as exploring the world and universe around us; it is necessary to begin to look into non- traditional techniques of locomotion to fully exploit the wide range of advantages robots can bring us. The advent of smaller and faster processing units for robots has often led to using the same standard forms of locomotion with faster calculation speeds and more intricate solution structures to improve performance. This system can however only improve performance to a point. The purpose of TopBot is to instead take a detailed look at a naturally occurring form of stability and exploit its benefits to stabilize a system as well as create a unique form of locomotion. This approach will help expand the solution set attainable from robotics in general