This World of Warcraft Robot Balances on a Single Ball

World of Warcraft is just about to celebrate its 20thbirthday and frankly, it is getting a bit long in the tooth. But though it may not be the cultural phenomenon that it was once, it still has a significant player base. According to reporting by Bellular Warcraft in March, the game still had about 7.25 million players. But Blizzard wants to pump those numbers back up and so they’re about to release a new expansion: The War Within. To drum up some publicity, they hired James Bruton to build this amazing robot that balances on a single ball.

Bruton’s job was to create a robotic version of the new “Shackled Shadow” mount, which looks like a sort of floating ghost thing that players can ride atop — not on like a horse, but literally standing atop a platform above the mount’s head. Notably, the Shackled Shadow does not have visible legs and that led Bruton to this unusual design concept. The entire robot, which is roughly the size of a very large man, rides perched on a ball.

This is a bit like a BB-8 droid on a much larger scale. And Bruton actually built a BB-8 replica several years ago, so he likely took advantage of some of the lessons he learned while working on that project. In this case, the Shackled Shadow robot balances on the ball using three omniwheels mounted 120 degrees apart. Large ODrive brushless DC motors turn those through a belted gear reduction to increase torque. Bruton paired them with ODrive drivers for easy control by a Teensy 4.1 development board.

Like a Segway, this drive system moves the base to counteract any tipping force. But while a Segway can only do that forward-to-backward, Bruton’s Shackled Shadow robot can move in any direction and so can counteract any tipping.

Several additional Dynamixel servo motors give the robot the ability to move its head and its arms, while LEDs illuminate the eyes.

Bruton is a talented roboticist and his finished projects tend to look exactly like that: robots. But he took a page from the Wicked Makers playbook for this project and enlisted some help to dress up the Shackled Shadow. Billie Achilleos gave this build a serious boost by fabricating the form of the figure. She gave it a foam head and foam hands, an ethereal sheer body, foam armor, and even a replica of the platform the player stands upon in the game.

We aren’t sure if it will give World of Warcraft a subscription boost or not, but this robotic Shackled Shadow sure is impressive.