The history behind The Orb

In 1987..

"When I were on a vacation 1987, one night I had some trouble to get to sleep.

Instead of counting sheeps, I thought of how a vehicle would look like, that could travel on water (and under water..), on land, snow, mud etc (actually there are "submarine" and "UAV" versions also), and at the same time be simple enough to build.

I came up with that a ballshape would be good, and then the first ideas of how it shoud be built was made.

The picture to the right is actually among the first drawings I made.

However, I didn't have the equipment and knowledge to build a prototype.

I did however a shell in school (was 14 years old back then), it was about 17 cm in diam.

Then it was delayed a couple of years, until I could borrow a two channel radio-controller, and I did the first simple prototype.
It consisted of two similar havles, made of glass-fibre plastics.

The picture to the right shows the first robot from rotundus, and the first shell I made (the small one to the right).

In 1992 I contacted "Utvecklingfonden", a swedish goverment company that assisted inventors.
At first they wasnt interested, they thought the ball was a hazard to the environment because it had batteries in it..
But later on they helped me to get in contact with FMV, the Swedish Defense Material Association, which thought it was intresting, and classified the patent pending. Time went on, and they didnt do much, so I decided to "unclassify" the patent, so I could contact other companies.

Ångström Space Technology Center
In 1997, I contacted Mrs. Kerstin Fredga at the SNSB, Swedish National Space Board, and showed her a 3D-animation of a ball on Mars.
She helped me to get in contact with Mr. Sven Grahn at the SSC, Swedish Space Corporation.
He gave me a new contact, Mr. Lars Stenmark, a Professor at the Uppsala University, and the ÅSTC, Ångström Space Technology Center
After some years of discussion, and ideas etc. Mr. Lars Stenmark involved one of his students, Mr. Fredrik Bruhn, in the project.
And to sum it up, Fredrik met Mr. Nils Hult, Viktor Kaznov and Mats Gustafsson, and came up with the idea to use it as a surveillance and inspection robot.

This idea became the Rotundus AB company."

©Copyright 2009, Per Samuelsson, phone +46 (0)501-70985, email: orb@picsart.net