ROBOTMAK3RS Blog

Kirk Backstrom did an excellent post on Saturday about self balancing robots. One of Kirk's points was that there are a lot of types of robots that can be made with this technology that hasn't been done yet with the NXT - so most people design robots that only balance or move (front / back and turn). But for me personally, after spending days working on my self balancing bike for the new Idea book , spending a whole weekend tuning the control system of a self-balancing robot is not my idea of fun: There are many ways you can achieve a self balancing robots even if you dont want to get your hands dirty with low level language programming and heavy control engineering theory. Here are some suggestions on how to achieve a self balancing robots without the complexity of having to implement a balancing algorithm in NXT: (1) For Segway type vehciles, Make the diameter of the wheel so big that it behaves more like the Hailfire Droid tank wheel. The secret here is to lower the centre o...