DIY 2-wheel balancing robot

The epic:

• Build a robot-car with ‘a certain level of autonomy’.
• Explore possible options for computer vision control.
• Explore simple options for mapping and localization.
• Preferably build a 2-wheeled differential robot.

In Reading Signs you’ll find a first exercise with computer vision control.

In turn this post offers a very basic approach to build a balancer and covers:

• My experiences with different sorts of hardware components
• A simple control logic
• Control loop timing experiences and semi-automatic tuning

The video shows the first 3 versions of the balancing robot:

• The basic balancer ran by an Arduino Uno and controlled by an Android app
• Two extended versions loaded with ultrasonic sensors and controlled by a Raspberry Pi

(The appearance of the bot is constantly changing due to my experiments)

A future post will cover distance reading, obstacle avoiding and odometry experiments.