“Bastion” by Team Essort

Team Essort is a contestant in “Hungarians on Mars” for many years now. They made this robot which has two special abilities:

• Its wheels are so-called omniwheels which means that there are 4 wheels facing each other, like four sides of a rectangle. Each wheel is able to rotate sidewards, so the robot can go into any direction without turning, but can also turn meanwhile, so it can go around something and keep looking at it all the time.
• It has a stereo camera on top which forwards its image to an Oculus Rift DK2 virtual reality-headset, thus enabling the user to virtually locate himself into the robot. Head movement is followed by the cameras, so the user can look around.

The robot can be controlled with a joystick, but only while sitting, because many people start going sideways after putting on the VR headset, and instinctively lean to the other side to compensate movement. If they would be doing this in a standing position, they could easily fall over and hurt themselves. Some people can’t tolerate virtual reality at all, and feel nauseous or experience vertigo after putting on the headset.