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Subject: 
Re: moving in a straight line with two motors?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 08:46:15 GMT
Original-From: 
Ben Laurie <BEN@ALGROUP.antispamCO.UK>
Viewed: 
2314 times
  
Scott Furman wrote:

Here's an exercise for someone with an RCX:  Create a chassis that
consists of one drive motor to the wheels and an angle sensor geared to a
2-d inverted pendulum on top.  Write a program that moves the chassis to
keep the pendulum straight vertical.

Believe it or not, I've been working on exactly this problem for the last few
days.  I built an angle sensor using a 500K potentiometer wired directly to an
RCX input port.  (Lego's angle sensor doesn't have sufficient angular
resolution unless it's geared down and adding those gears adds too much
mechanical resistance for the pendulum to swing freely.)

The problems I am still facing are:

   * The acceleration provided by two motors isn't sufficient to keep the
     pendulum erect if it's only slightly perturbed from vertical.  Partly,
     this is due to the tires slipping when the machine accelerates from rest,
     but I think that, even with that corrected, the motors may not be
     powerful enough.

I think making the pendulum longer should cure this...

   * Although there's programmatic control of the motor power, there doesn't
     seem to be control over the motor velocity.  As a result, the motor tends
     to jerk when it starts or changes direction.  When the pendulum is
     leaning slightly, the motor turns on briefly to correct it, but the
     application of full velocity tends to cause overcompensation and the
     pendulum swings the other way.  In a few cycles, the pendulum
     oscillations increase beyond the motor's ability to compensate.

Possibly making it heavier will cure this...

Cheers,

Ben.

--
Ben Laurie            |Phone: +44 (181) 735 0686| Apache Group member
Freelance Consultant  |Fax:   +44 (181) 735 0689|http://www.apache.org/
and Technical Director|Email: ben@algroup.co.uk |
A.L. Digital Ltd,     |Apache-SSL author     http://www.apache-ssl.org/
London, England.      |"Apache: TDG" http://www.ora.com/catalog/apache/



Message is in Reply To:
  Re: moving in a straight line with two motors?
 
(...) Believe it or not, I've been working on exactly this problem for the last few days. I built an angle sensor using a 500K potentiometer wired directly to an RCX input port. (Lego's angle sensor doesn't have sufficient angular resolution unless (...) (26 years ago, 14-Nov-98, to lugnet.robotics)

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