It was early February 2021 and there was a lot of snow in the weather forecast for the next few days. I really wanted to test my Sphero robot on the upcoming snow but I was a bit afraid that it might get water damage so I started googling for solutions. I saw that they made these “nubby” rubber covers that protect the robot from getting damaged. I ordered one and it arrived just on time for the big snow. I grabbed my Sphero, the new nubby cover, my phone and a tablet, and I went straight to the park. I remember I did so many field tests with the robot with the nubby on, like how it would move on different quantities of snow and on different terrains like iced grass, asphalt, frozen mud, holes on the pavement. I even tried climbing and going down a hill with it. The nubby cover boosts the robot’s mobility a lot, making impossible paths and terrains possible.

I remember I took a lot of videos of those experiments with my phone, and now, more than 3 years later, I just found that footage on my computer just sitting there, forgotten. I can’t believe I never glued those clips together to upload a fun video to my YouTube channel. That’s exactly what I did today. Here’s a link to the video if you want to watch it (it’s like 1 minute long): 

The nubby, as I mentioned, is made of thick rubber, but it bends really well and it’s kind of soft, so you can easily get the robot inside. Also, the texture of the cover is not just simply smooth, it has these 3D dots looking like a tank tire,  which is great thinking (of the people that designed the nubby). You do need some kind of texture around the Sphero robot in order to be able to move on the snow. Otherwise the robot just slips and spins and never moves due to the lack of traction. The nubby cost around 15 US dollars which I believe is kind of expensive for the small piece of rubber that you get. Also, they produce only 2-3 types and colors of covers, and that’s for the Sphero Bolt robot only, there’s no cover for the mini version of the robot (which is the more commonly bought one, twice as cheap as the Bolt). On the other hand, I do enjoy my Sphero nubby cover a lot and I’ve used it on many occasions, mostly during Winters (because of the snow) and on the beach (because sand is the other difficult terrain).