Self-Balancing DIY Robot: Video Demo

Two-wheels good, more-wheels bad.  That's the principle behind this self-balancing DIY robot, which uses similar principles to the Segway to scuttle about the room.  The work of Italian programmer Nicola, the robot is based on an Arduino mainboard and gyros, together with a couple of motors capable of feeding back their position.Video demos of the self-balancing robot after the cut

Basically, the gyros work with accelerometers to monitor whether the robot is moving forward or backward, spinning, tipping forward or falling back.  That data is handed over to the Arduino, which also gets input from the motors to figure out the robot's velocity.  All that is crunched together and the robot shuttles its wheels to keep everything upright.

So far its cost around $350 to build, and the results are generally good.  Eventually the robot does fall, but it gets in some decent balancing before that happens – Nicola believes that with a couple more weeks of tweaking and testing the settings the consistency rate will improve vastly.

[via Hack N Mod]