Actually, I’ve been giving some thought to Professor Frits’ wild outburst. Raising the battery will give you more time to correct a fall. I know it’s counter-intuitive, but it stands a fighting chance of working.
Have you given any though to how you can get it to move around? My feeling was that you have to allow it to fall a little, but not quite catch up. This means if you want it to go one way and it doesn’t want to fall that way, you have to force it to drive the “wrong” way to cause it to start to fall.
Getting it to drive down a slope will be lots of fun to code!!
To move it around, i concluded that the best thing is to just change the value for “straight up”. That is: to make it stable, the program tries to keep the robot angle to 0°, correcting as needed. If you force it to keep the robot angle to say 2°, it will keep that angle, and the only way is to have a fixed speed forward. I haven’t tested it but i’m almost sure it will work.
I think that, once the robot is as stable as i want it, slopes should pose no problems. If the robot is straight up, it shouldn’t fall becouse of the slope, and the wheels should just keep it on the same spot…
Did any of you consider doing the broomstick experiment before making suggestions about battery placement? Even as a thought experiment. I did. The longer the broomstick, the more time I have to correct the angle.
As an aside: Nicola, try to get a feel for your controller’s job. Do it yourself. Pick up your bot by the wheels en try to balance it yourself. As if it were a broomstick. That way you will be able to tell if raising the CoM (Center of Mass) will make it easier or harder.
I’ve been using the same engine controller for a robot very similar. After a few months I have managed to become operational. I still have to improve a lot.
Ehy, that’s really very similar to my design it looks even more stable
Is there a page about your project with more details and info? i’ll be happy to see how you implemented it. If not, you could consider adding your robot it to this site, i’m sure others will be happy as well.
