Institute for Physical AI @ JBI · a demonstration
How far does it roll?
A rover, taken apart three ways: the wheels that carry it, the one rule that says where it can and cannot go, and the brain that parks it. This is the body, drag to turn it over, then take it apart. The drone paid to hang in the air; put the same battery on wheels and the number changes by a factor you will not believe. The source on the right runs the real driving physics, so it cannot lie to you.
Provenance. A rolling wheel barely fights the ground: the resistance is a small coefficient Crr times the weight, so the distance on a battery of energy E is E·η / (Crr·m·g). With ordinary numbers that is tens of kilometres, the same charge that held the drone in the air for minutes, going nowhere. What the wheel cannot do, no matter the motor, is move straight sideways: that is the next lesson. All numbers computed live by the Institute's open drive core. The 3D model is illustrative; the numbers are exact.