Thursday, May 15, 2014

2 Wheel Self Balancing Robot (SBR)


Fascinated by Sageway, I decided to try 2 wheel self balancing robot. This is my experimental Self Balancing Robot based on Arduino and it needs lot of work to be done on the software. I am not an expert, but trying to learn topic of my interest.

SBR uses Gyro+accelerometer  MPU6050, 2x BO DC motorsBluetooth Module HC-05 , Motor driver L293D and a 5v cellphone external battery charger which powers everything.

The Code and library has been adopted from various sources on the Internet. My code is no where near perfect, I am struggling with PID settings and other(oscillation) issues.

There are few hardware problems like motor backlash and poor quality wheels.  SBR easily balances on soft surface, but no much on hard surface (more to do with PID than HW at least in my case).

I had been trying to adjust PID values on the Fly using bluetooth HC-05 of SBR using PC.

Some photographs and a video of experimental SBR. I made two versions V1 and V2.






VERSION 2

Below is the second version of SBR, I worked on the code resulting in more stability with new hardware. This time I used 300RPM metal gear motor and 12V/1A LA battery. Robot is very heavy and battery can last for about 30 min.  Future plans are to make it self navigating as and when time permits.




If you like the concept of self balancing robot, history of self balancing vehicles might interest you.

Links

Brennan's Gyroscopically-Balanced Monorail (1903).

The Schilovski Gyrocar(1914).

The Ford Gyron (1961).