Hi all,
I’m wondering what needs to be done/changed to allow BalanceBot to work with a body that hangs in the pendulum down position. Basically I have a differential drive robot with wheels much larger than the body. However, the body has more mass so it tends to swing as the bot drives around when I operate it as a standard skid-steer Rover. I would like to keep the body at a certain angle to hopefully get smoother motions.
Thanks.
That’s an interesting question and it makes me wonder, how does it move freely while still having a pendulum hanging below it? Maybe it’s a boat or an airship? In any case… no need to tell us if you’re not ready to.
I’ve heard of this problem in relation to multicopters or helicopters carrying slung payloads and it certainly seems similar to balance bots in some ways. I wonder though if you might be able to reduce much of the oscillation by simply reducing the vehicle’s maximum acceleration (ATC_ACCEL_MAX).
In our implementation, we drive the balance bot by controlling the pitch angle as explained here: How Balance Bots work — Rover documentation. I don’t think that’s practical for a normal rover.
To limit how much the body wobbles, IMHO, limiting the acceleration as Randy suggested, would work best.