Fly wheel on a balancing robot?

[Conscripted]

Good afternoon all. I've been lurking in this forum for a while now. I've purchased all the parts I need for the 50 dollar robot and will be putting that together as soon as the parts arrive. When that is finished I have a couple plans for other project that do not include a dynamically balancing bot. That having been said I've been doing some reading on the subject lately and find them very interesting. I found myself wondering if you could put a flywheel on a balancing robot to help with it's balance. If such a feet is possible would it be better placed near the bottom or top?

Thank you for listening to my rambling
Bill

[Ro-Bot-X]

Check this out:

[youtube]OnRV-ggJmQ4[/youtube]

[AndrewM]

Many of the earlier upright balancing robots (legged or two wheeled) made use of a flywheel of sorts towards the top of the robot.  Usually this was in the form of a pole that would move side to side to offset its gait in the case of a walker, or forward and back to aid in a wheeled balancer.  As you can see in the video Ro-Bot-X provided, it does work, although more recently researchers have been using different methods in their search for a more "natural" robot balance.

Be sure to keep us updated as you begin working on it.   

[Conscripted]

Thanks for the replies and the video! I guess that answers my question.

Bill

[Admin]

another example:
http://www.societyofrobots.com/robotforum/index.php?topic=1236.0

[[email protected]]

I would like to build a flywheel balancer as well.  Did you ever complete this project?  I have no idea what parts to order.

[newInRobotics]

I would like to build a flywheel balancer as well.  Did you ever complete this project?  I have no idea what parts to order.

Then start looking for already built and documented robots, once You find one - You'll get an idea of what You need to build one Yourself

[[email protected]]

Man, it is a maze trying to find this information.  If you have any links to point me to that would be great.  So far I understand I will need some kind of PID controller, likely code to control the motors and all the hardware.  I can write in C or shell scripts if I need to. 

The thing is that all these posts are so old that I'm wondering if there is a kit out there that I could buy or someone could help me put the parts list etc together.  No luck so far.  Hence my question to you if you had finished your project.

Thanks for any help.

[newInRobotics]

Man, it is a maze trying to find this information.

If You want to find step-by-step tutorial, then there aren't a lot of them available. If You are willing to extract information from what is actually available online - there are plenty of resources, such as YouTube videos, other robots which are not what You want, but they use same/similar control systems.

So far I understand I will need some kind of PID controller, likely code to control the motors and all the hardware.

PID is the one to be used in this case. You will most likely want to have gyro to get angular velocity and accelerometer to get current tilt angle. Data from Your sensors will have to be fed into PID loop to set angular velocity of flywheel.

I can write in C or shell scripts if I need to.

I'm not sure if You are aware, but C for microcontrollers is a bit different that for operating systems. Not that the language itself is different, but the features You use are different. Shell script in this case is pretty much useless.

The thing is that all these posts are so old that I'm wondering if there is a kit out there that I could buy or someone could help me put the parts list etc together.

I'm not aware of any kits of that sort, but hey, You are free to look around. Regarding part list - get parts used to build $50 Robot MCU - and You have brain of the robot.