pic: Vex 2 Wheel Balancing Robot

[Tom Bottiglieri]

Originally Posted by billbo911

Greg, first off, that's awesome. I would love to see some video of it in action, hint hint.
From the picture I would say that you are using several non-standard Vex components. I can see the motor is not standard, the motor controller looks custom. I can see what looks like 4 analog inputs from sensors of some sort and one interrupt input from what I am guessing is a digital encoder.

Care to elaborate on how you achieved this?

WE NEED DETAILS!!!!!!!!

It looks like the guts of the balancing comes from the accelerometer (from the 2005 KOP ), gyro, and encoder.

I remember seeing the control algorithm for this kind of bot on some site. It needed 4 inputs.. Angular position (found initially with accelerometer and force of gravity, then ntegrated from gyro), angular rate of change (reading from the gyro), linear position (encoders), and linear rate (derivative of position).

The stuff on top of the Vex controller was for a buzzer, and driving a backlit switch. There was a small servo amplifier on the other side.