This Robot's on a Roll!

Engineering parents can be a lot of fun. And dangerous, too — but mostly fun. Hardware hacking parents have been known to build their children all sorts of cool electronic gadgets, miniature vehicles, and even elaborate contraptions like backyard roller coasters. But even less technically-inclined parents are usually familiar with the classic basket roller coaster. For the uninitiated, this trick involves sitting a young child in a basket in front of a TV showing a first-person view of a roller coaster ride, then moving the basket all around to match the action on the screen.

But before too long, the day comes where they have outgrown the basket ride. Dave Niewinski, of the Dave's Armoury YouTube channel, is an engineering dad whose children recently reached that point. But rather than throw in the towel, he decided to build a much more interesting faux roller coaster experience. That involved creating a robot that can authentically match the twists and turns of a real roller coaster.

To make this happen, Niewinski used a large and powerful KUKA industrial robot arm. That is not exactly standard equipment in a maker’s home electronics lab, so this is a project that only a few can replicate. A custom steel frame was designed and built to attach a chair to the end of the arm.

A large, curved ASUS gaming monitor was attached to the frame directly in front of the rider to make for an immersive experience. A powerful, yet compact, computer was needed for the build, so Niewinski chose an ASUS ROG NUC computer with an Intel Core Ultra 9 Processor and a GeForce RTX 4070 GPU. This system handled the streaming video and real-time control of the robot arm.

It would have been a nightmare to manually program the robot arm to make all the appropriate movements to reproduce the feeling of being on a coaster, but fortunately, Niewinski was able to obtain the necessary data from CoasterStats. They make sensor-laden dummies that capture all sorts of data, synced with first-person video, as they ride on a roller coaster. This information was used to drive the robot and the display. There was some scaling that needed to be done, however, since the robot cannot move to the same extent as the real rides.

It may sound a bit dangerous to put young children on this robot ride, but Niewinski did have a number of safety systems in place. The robot was limited to exerting no more than 1G of force, for example, even though the real rides often go much higher. There was also a system of safety lasers and a kill switch, not to mention safety testing of the robot coaster before the kids hopped on.

Given that the robot is equipped with a gaming computer and monitor, it would not be a surprise if the system got an update in the future to make it more interactive. Niewinski hinted that something new along those lines might be on the way, so be sure to check back in for updates.