Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

e14 Contributor — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 11:20:17 GMT

Hello,

I´m interested on quadcopters too and found your post after a short seeking.

TKS for sharing.

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

4ringfan — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 10:28:00 GMT

[mention:b60dcf9c31a8492ea6badbcc611934d0:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05],

At first, a Segway popped into my head, but then I was like, wow. Great idea, He's using the exact same methods that are employed within a quad copter to keep this thing vertical. Instead of powering up or down on an opposite rotor to keep the quad level, you are just applying power to the drive motors in one direction or another. Allowing for it to go slightly out of balance allows for forward/reverse movement. How much deflection off of level do you allow for the forward/reverse movement? I'm sure there is a point where it is too far. From my experiences on a Segway, the further you lean forward, the faster the Segway goes, but it reaches a point where it is going as fast as it can and it begins pushing back against you (Page 48). http://www.segway.com/downloads/pdfs/ReferenceManual.pdf The manual interrupt control for the individual wheel//wheels allow for rotation on an axis. From watching your video it appeared that you are running both wheels in opposite directions to turn, essentially a ZTR. If you have more of a soft analog input into the steering I suppose that you could get rotation on a wheel axis instead of rotation on the center axis. Beyond that, I'm sure that having the weight of your motors low helps. The Segways have their heavy battery source placed below the axle to help balance out the load on the motors from the people weight that is above. Almost a "self-righting" type of mechanism, I believe.

Robotic Mobility Platforms

Awesome project! Very neat.

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

mcb1 — Sat, 18 Apr 2015 08:21:36 GMT

Nice work

It looks promising.

I have heard the Arduino struggles due to the relative low speed processor, but then you could use a much faster version Chipkit UNO

element14 part number

[View:/resized-image/__size/443x220/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-0208023c-27e9-4f16-a869-2da8b9650de0/contentimage_5F00_182681.png:443:220]

specs

http://www.digilentinc.com/Products/Detail.cfm?Prod=CHIPKIT-UNO32

Mark

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

shabaz — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 16:13:12 GMT

Hi Inderpreet,

Wow, very nice!!

It seems very stable. And well made!!

I can see that this would be a good platform to test out some of your plans for the quad-copter safely.

Wood is one of my favourite materials to work with too - don't see enough of it in technology projects!!

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

ipv1 — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 13:13:27 GMT

Hi all,

Thanks for the positive comments.

John Sir - To be honest this post was a toe dip to see if there is any interest in the subject. I have some interns producing some content that can use useful in understanding self balancing robots and possibly make a segway! I will definitely be posting more details about the build, theory and practice since there is much to be learned and also as I found out the hardway that there is no single place where this system has been discussed from the point of learning. More will come soon.

Dimitrios sir - If there is anything sepcific you would like me to discuss, please do let me know.

Neil Sir - I initially forked the code from a Mr. Franko who has done a similar project and the code is available on my github at http://github.com/inderpreet HOWEVER the code was not completely documented nor did it work out of the box for me. I made changes in a branch on my local machine which I will merge and push once I finish commenting properly. You are welcome to the existing code if you would like to experiment.

cheers,

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

neilk — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 12:37:18 GMT

Hi [mention:b60dcf9c31a8492ea6badbcc611934d0:e9ed411860ed4f2ba0265705b8793d05],

Very impressive. I look forward to seeing some details of your code.

Neil

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

dtsartsanis — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 09:38:31 GMT

Very interesting project.[View:/resized-image/__size/16x16/__key/commentfiles/f7d226abd59f475c9d224a79e3f0ec07-0208023c-27e9-4f16-a869-2da8b9650de0/contentimage_5F00_1.png:16:16]

RE: Self Balancing Robot - Temporary Diversion from the Quadcopter Project - Demo

jw0752 — Wed, 15 Apr 2015 05:15:37 GMT

Hi Inderpreet,

Very cool. I like how you use salvage and common parts to make the self balancing robot. I look forward to reading more about this project. This last week I salvaged out a Kodak Printer and ended up with a couple nice motors with optical encoders. I have been studying the motors with the hopes of interfacing them and controlling them with the arduino. Hopefully I can learn something from your posts.

John