At a time when people are talking about self-driving cars, a group of students from the CMR Institute of Engineering (CMRIT) has built a prototype of a two-wheeled self-balancing robot from scratch. Self-balancing robots are presently used in the automotive and manufacturing industry.
Built as part of their college workshop, the group of fourth-year BE students spent nearly two months building the robot. “We started in March and completed building the robot in May as part of a college workshop. The robot balances on the principal of pendulum, a suspended pendulum. We have used motors to accelerate the robot. When the body is about to fall the motor is pushed further so that the body moves backwards. We have used Bluetooth to control the device from the phone,” said Kumud Ranjan, one of the team members.
The successful design and building of a two-wheeled balancing robot demonstrate a knowledge of control systems and sensor interfacing that can translate to real world applications. “In the chemical industry, the transportation of chemicals could prove harmful due to the nature of the product. However, a self-balancing robot could do the job without any humans,” said Kumud.
Asked about the most difficult aspect of building the prototype and Kumud says that it was the programming of the robot. “The building and assembling of the parts of the robot were very easy. It was the programming of the robot that took time. Writing an algorithm for balancing the robot was not easy and took us nearly all of the 2 months,” he said.