Imitating human acceleration of a gyroscopic device

Spinning up a Powerball – a hand-held gyroscopic toy or exerciser that exhibits rotor spin-up when applying appropriate torque to its casing – is a fairly easy task for a human but rather complex to perform with a robot. To accomplish the task of spinning up the rotor of the Powerball with a robot, we measured the motion of a human and identified the conditions an individual uses for a successful spin-up. Several control approaches were applied to the device mainly using feedback information from the velocity counter and force/torque sensor to synchronize the torque exerted by the device and the motion of the robot. Best human imitation was achieved with two modified learning methods with highest rotor speeds in excess of 1480rad/s, rating among top 100 world Powerball players.