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Subject: 
Re: moving in a straight line with two motors?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.robotics
Date: 
Sat, 14 Nov 1998 16:00:28 GMT
Original-From: 
Daniel Miller <DANIELMI@EXPERTantispam.CC.PURDUE.EDU>
Viewed: 
5453 times
  
On Fri, 13 Nov 1998, 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...
> 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.

Perhaps you're asking too much of them.  Try toning down the pendulum;
that is, give it some length below the hinge point as well.  As long as
it's still top-heavy you're still technically an inverted pendulum, and
the added mass below the pivot decreases the frequency.

>    * 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.

Hrm.  Tried weighing down the chassis so the acceleration isn't so high?


Daniel "Dan'l" Miller                Senior, School of Aeronautics and
danielmi@expert.cc.purdue.edu        Astronautics, Purdue, Indiana
danielmi@cartoon.ecn.purdue.edu



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 (...) (28 years ago, 14-Nov-98, to lugnet.robotics)

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