Dale's Homemade Robots

Balancing Robots

August 10, 2008

I'm getting a little bored with combat robots.  I need something new to feed my experimenters wanderlust.  I think it's about time I explored the land of Segway style balancing vehicles.   Yeah, I know I'm a little late the the party.  Segways have been in production since late 2001 and are now pretty common but I still want to try to build one.   In this section I will document my steps to design and build at least one Segway style balancing robot.  I'm starting out with a small bot that simply stands upright on 2 wheels.  The controller has no digital microprocessor,  it's all analog.  Yes boys an girls, I'm going old school with resistors, capacitors and op-amps ( no tubes though).  Once I learn the basics I intend to add a microprocessor and radio remote control so I can drive it around the house.  If that phase is successful and I haven't burned out on it yet, I'll try to scale it up to something a person could ride on.

Phase 1: Analog Balancing Bot

Phase 2: Ball Balancer

Phase 3: Rideable ball balancer