http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IH4EZ1GCrK0
Printable View
Here's a good starting point.
http://www.wa4dsy.net/robot/balancing-r ... ancing-bot
You have 2 options. The first option will work the best by far.
1. Use a 1 axis accelerometer at the top of the bot. You will have to design an rc interface to this that will alter the weith of the pulses going to the esc by a certain amount depending on which way its falling. This way it will constantly catch itself from falling over. The more times it can do this every second the better. the robot in the video is incredibly smooth, I have never seen a balancing robot that smooth before. For a robot this smooth you will need a fairly powerfull micro controller ( and arduino, picaxe or pic should do it) , an accelerometer (they are tiny tiny chips so you wil need to buy an accelerometer already soldered to a breakout board from somewhere like sparkfun) or you could use a wii mote and serial bluetooth adapter !!. And finally and most importantly you need some motors and gearboxes with as little give as you can possibly get, this is because, when the robot is still the micro controller will be trying to make tiny adjustments and if there is any give in the transmission it will not move so will over correct and may fall over. If you are interested in this for a robot i would love to help with the electronics and programming side.
2. The more expensive but much worse option is 2 use 2 high end helicopter gyros . Just whack 2 exepensive gyros on each channel , put them right where the axle is for the robot and set them up using the manual and if you use very expensive gyros with very fast response times and large correction boundaries then it might work ok , but it will be very jittery and if it falls over there is a good chance it will just plugh into the wall with no way of stopping it , not good for tech check :(.
Option 1 will be cheaper and a whole heap better but option 2 is a lot lot easier.
EDIT: the link woody gave was a bot using a gyro and accelerometer, this could work well if your budget would stretch :P. And are you planning on modding saint or seraphim or are you building a whole new non combat bot ?
Far too clever for me! :?
put a load of weights on the bottom of seraphim? :mrgreen:
Hi the idea of this robot seemed so good it was a shame that it is not replicated at the robot shows as a way of keeping the interest of the public between fights.
My knowledge of the electronics side is very limited but I would like to have a robot like this just for fun, and public interest. There is a show at Snibston Discovery Park on the 28 December 09, this type of robot would generate interest with the general public and be an interesting item for robotic talks and lectures etc.
:D
Perhaps we should discuss it next show