A juggling robot is a

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

designed to be able to successfully carry out bounce or

toss juggling Toss juggling is the form of juggling which is most recognisable as 'juggling'. Toss juggling can be used as: a performing art, a sport, a form of exercise, as meditation, a recreational pursuit or hobby. In toss juggling, objects — such ...

. Robots capable of juggling are designed and built both to increase and test understanding and theories of human movement, juggling, and

robotics Robotics is the interdisciplinary study and practice of the design, construction, operation, and use of robots. Within mechanical engineering, robotics is the design and construction of the physical structures of robots, while in computer s ...

. Juggling robots may include sensors to guide arm/hand movement or may rely on physical methods such as tracks or funnels to guide prop movement. Since true juggling requires more props than hands, many robots described as capable of juggling are not.

Bounce juggling

A toss juggling robot that can do more than a two ball

column A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

has only recently been built. However,

Claude Shannon Claude Elwood Shannon (April 30, 1916 – February 24, 2001) was an American mathematician, electrical engineer, computer scientist, cryptographer and inventor known as the "father of information theory" and the man who laid the foundations of th ...

built the first juggling robot, a 3-ball bounce juggler, from an Erector Set, in the 1970s.

) "Bounce juggling is easier to accomplish than is toss juggling because the balls are grabbed at the top of their trajectories, when they are moving the slowest," and Shannon's machine tendency to correct throwing errors was through tracks on its hands. By 1992, Christopher G. Atkeson and Stefan K. Schaal of the

Georgia Institute of Technology The Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly referred to as Georgia Tech, GT, and simply Tech or the Institute) is a public university, public research university and Institute of technology (United States), institute of technology in Atlanta, ...

built a similar 5-ball bounce juggling robot. Decorated as and named W. C. Fields, Shannon's machine used grooved cups/tracks instead of sensors or feedback. Shannon also devised a juggling theorem. In 1989 Martin Bühler and Daniel E. Koditschek produced a juggler with one rotating bar, moving one way then the other, that bounces two-props in a

fountain A fountain, from the Latin "fons" ( genitive "fontis"), meaning source or spring, is a decorative reservoir used for discharging water. It is also a structure that jets water into the air for a decorative or dramatic effect. Fountains were o ...

of indefinite length.

Toss juggling

Sakaguchi et al. (1991) and Miyazaki (1993) produced a one-armed two-ball

juggler with a two

degrees of freedom In many scientific fields, the degrees of freedom of a system is the number of parameters of the system that may vary independently. For example, a point in the plane has two degrees of freedom for translation: its two coordinates; a non-infinite ...

arm and an unactuated funnel-shaped hand. Kizaki and Namiki (2012) developed a high-speed hand-arm system with actuated fingers that is able to repeatedly juggle two balls in a fountain pattern. Ploeger et al. (2020) achieved stable two-ball juggling in a column pattern for 33 minutes on a four

robotic arm with a funnel-shaped hand using a learning based approach. By 2011 students at the Department of Control Engineering at Prague's Czech Technical University built a 5-ball cascade juggling robot whose arms have both vertical and horizontal motion, whose hands are ring-shaped, and which contains a basket that provides the initial throws and relaunches any failed catches. Disney Research is developing a robot capable of

pass juggling Passing is the act of juggling between two or more people. It is most commonly seen as a subset of toss juggling. Passing Passing can be performed with three or more juggling props but is most commonly performed with six objects such as ball ...

with the goal of being able to provide more physical interaction between visitors and mechanized characters.

Contact juggling

Contact juggling Contact manipulation is a form of object manipulation that focuses on the movement of objects such as balls in contact with the body. Although often used in conjunction with "toss juggling", it differs in that it involves the rolling of one or ...

appears to be less common among robots, as it is with people. However, in 2010 undergraduates at

Northwestern University Northwestern University (NU) is a Private university, private research university in Evanston, Illinois, United States. Established in 1851 to serve the historic Northwest Territory, it is the oldest University charter, chartered university in ...

developed a robot capable of rolling a grooved disk from the center, over the edge, and to the center of the other side of a figure-eight shaped track capable of rotation.Contact Juggling Robot
, ''MinistryofManipulation.com''.

References

External links

*Mason, Matt (1996).
A Survey Of Robotic Juggling And Dynamic Manipulation
, '' Juggling.org''. {{Robotics Juggling Robots

Bounce juggling

Toss juggling

Contact juggling

See also

References

External links