LEGO Segway Built From Stock NXT Kit, Doesn’t Need No Gyros
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 17 of February , 2010 at 3:57 am
The robot build designs that come in the stock LEGO NXT 2.0 kit are pretty neat, but I bet you never thought you could build a self balancing LEGO Segway… After all, you need a gyro for that, right?
Right?
Or, apparently, all you need is the light sensor:
The way it works is that when the robot tilts forward, the light sensor gets closer to the ground and the sensor signal increases. Tilting backwards moves the sensor the other way and the signal decreases. All the robot has to do is to try to keep the sensor signal constant by compensating for the changes with its motors, and it’ll stay upright. The only trick is that the robot has to start off perfectly balanced… Unlike a real Segway, it has no idea what balanced actually is, it’s just looking at the relative feedback from the sensor.
Also, if you have a 2nd NXT brick, you can control the system (making it go forwards and backwards, anyway) via Bluetooth. Now if there was just some way to get it to turn, it could potentially be to the LEGO car what the LEGO car was to the LEGO horse and LEGO buddy.
The build instructions and code can be found here.
[ NXTPrograms ] VIA [ Make ]
Comments (3)
Category: General
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Comment by compukidmike
Made Wednesday, 17 of February , 2010 at 10:18 am
I’d just like to point out that this is old. Maybe not this particular build, but it was done with the old lego mindstorms kit. Here’s a link to one of them… http://www.teamhassenplug.org/robots/legway/ It was featured on techtv back in 2003.
Comment by Peter
Made Thursday, 18 of February , 2010 at 9:43 am
I guess it is about the same principle that was used in the Keyence Revolutor Helicopter.
Great work..
Comment by quantum_flux
Made Tuesday, 19 of October , 2010 at 1:08 am
Those things would be sweet to have in intro to physics coarses.
