We joke about robots a lot around here, but often the scientific advances are more impressive for their implications than their ability to make confounding YouTube videos. Fortunately, the Cubli manages to pull off both.
What is Cubli? Essentially, it’s a cube structure with a series of wheels and counterweights that allow it to, well, see for yourself:
This thing can stand on any edge or point, and never be knocked over. It can spin on its point as well. It can even stand up and “walk” using this technique. Can we GIF it? Yes we can!
We bring this up both to inform you that this will probably be what you’re buying any children you may know for Christmas next year, and also because this will create entirely new forms of robots. The ideas behind the Cubli can be used to make robots that assemble (or disassemble) themselves, for example, or to have robots “walk” across hostile surfaces with fewer external moving parts. And, of course, create new opportunities for cheating at dice games.
But the people who built it admit that they just think it’s awesome. And, hey, GIFable!